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COUNTESS OF ALBANY 



WIMPLES ^AND 
CRISPINaPINS 

BEING-STVDIES-INTHE 
COIFFVRE'AND-ORNA 

MENTS- OF -WOMEN 

BYTHEODORE-^CHILD 

ILLVSTKATED 




'-^3.2 S^^ 



NEW-YORK Id 

HARPER- AND -BROTHERS 
1835 



\n. 



\~ 






Copyright, 1894, by Harper & Brothers. 

All rights reserved. 



CONTEIS'TS 



OIIAPTKB PAGK 

I. EGYPT 1 

II. ASIA 15 

III. ATHENS 31 

IV. ROME 47 

V. THE MIDDLE AGES 74 

VI. FLORENCE . . . , 93 

VII. VENICE 112 

VIII. THE SPANISH TOQUE 130 

IX. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ....... 143 

X. THE ROMANTIC PERIOD 169 

XI. ON JEWELRY AND ORNAMENTS ...... 191 



ILLUSTKATIONS 



PAQK 

COUNTESS OF ALBANY Frontispiece 

GUINEA-HEN HELMET 5 

EGYPTIAN LADY 8 

EGYPTIAN COIFFUEE 11 

WOMAN OF OULED NAIL TRIBE, ALGERIA 19 

WOMAN OF OULED NAIL TRIBE, ALGERIA 25 

ISHTAR 29 

VENUS OF GNIDOS WITH THE DOUBLE FILLET ..... 32 

THE MUSE THALIA 36 

A QUEEN WITH THE CYPRIOTE CURLS . 37 

A VENUS WITH THE BOW 40 

LEKANE FOUND AT KERTCH ...... 42 

APHRODITE ANADYOMENE 45 

DANCING-WOMAN WITH SIMPLE FILLET 48 

DANCING-WOMAN WITH RINGLETS IN FRONT 51 

EMPRESS FAUSTINA 55 

JUNO 59 

VESTAL VIRGIN . 63 

JULIA, DAUGHTER OF TITUS 67 

DIDIA CLARA 71 

PORTRAIT OF A LADY, BY PIERO DELLA FRANCESCA ... 77 

A LADY WITH A FERRONNIERE 83 

THE DUCHESS OF URBINO 87 

PORTRAIT OF TWO GIRLS, BY BERNARD VAN ORLEY ... 91 



PAGE 

HEAD OP A GRACE BY BOTTICELLI 99 

FROM A DRAWING BY LEONARDO DA VINCI 102 

TREACHERY AND FRAUD DRESSING THE HAIR OF CALUMNY 105 

WAVES AND TORSADES 107 

FROM A FRESCO BY PIERO DELLA FRANCESCA .... 109 

ELEONORA OF TOLEDO, BY BRONZINO 115 

VIOLANTE, BY PALMA VECCHIO 131 

PEARLS AND JE\^LS, FROM A PICTURE BY TITIAN . . .127 

MARGUERITE OF PARMA, BY COELLO 133 

MARIA OF AUSTRIA, BY COELLO 139 

DIANE DE POITIERS, BY JEAN GOUJON 147 

DUTCH LADIES WALKING, FROM A PAINTING BY DAVID 

TENIERS 151 

MARIE MANCINI, BY PIERRE MIGNARD ....... 155 

STUDY OF A HEAD, BY WATTEAU » o . 159 

BUST OF MARIE ADELAIDE , . 163 

BUST OF MARIE ADELAIDE — REVERSE VIEW 167 

EMPRESS JOSEPHINE, BY PRUD'HON ... = ,... 171 

THE SISTERS, BY DEVERIA 175 

COUNTESS DE SAINT- JEAN D'ANGELY, BY GERARD . . . .179 

MADAME PREVOST, BY GREVEDON 183 

"MARIE," BY GREVEDON 187 

GOLD WREATH OF MYRTLE LEAVES, ANTIQUE ITALO-GREEK 193 
TWO FIBULA OF BEATEN GOLD, ANTIQUE ITALO-GREEK . 195 

ANTIQUE ITALO-GREEK EAR-RINGS 196 

ANTIQUE ITALO-GREEK EAR-RING 197 

RENAISSANCE PENDANT AND BRACELET 200 

MIRROR-CASE. FOURTEENTH CENTURY, FRENCH 202 

SIXTEENTH CENTURY COMB, FRENCH 203 

SIXTEENTH CENTURY COMB, ITALIAN 204 

RENAISSANCE PENDANT 206 

THE MERMAN 207 



INTRODUCTION 

" But you will say that hair is but an excremen- 
titious thing." — Thomas Howell^ Familiar Letters. 

Herder, the stupendous German philosopher, 
compared hair to a sacred forest covering the mys- 
teries of thought. The human body, he imagined, 
being the type of ov6.qv par excellence, contains in 
the hair natural disorder similar to the confusion 
of the hirsute growths of the earth, which are 
forests. 

Monsieur Lefebvre, the eminent capillary artist, 
in a lecture delivered in Paris in the year 1778, 
said : 

"Coiffure is an art. To modify by agreeable 
forms those long filaments with which nature 
seems to have intended to make a veil rather than 
an ornament ; to impart to those forms a consist- 
ency of which the matter that composes them 
does not seem to be susceptible; to give to abun- 
dance a regular arrangement that causes confusion 
to disappear, and to make up for poverty by a 
wealth which deceives the sharpest eye ; to com- 



bine accessories with the basis which they are des- 
tined to attenuate or to relieve ; to strengthen a 
delicate face by light tresses ; to accompany a ma- 
jestic one by wavy tufts ; to redeem the harshness 
of features or of eyes by a contrast, and sometimes 
by a purposed harmony; to accomplish all these 
prodigies without other resources than a comb and 
a few powders of different colors — such is the es- 
sential character of our art. 

" The moment he sees a physiognomy the coif- 
feur must immediately feel what kind of ornament 
will suit it. A woman, while appearing to have 
her hair dressed like other women, must neverthe- 
less have it arranged to suit her particular air. 
Consequently in every toilet the artist is obliged 
to renew the most difficult of the miracles of Nat- 
ure, which is to be in all her productions always 
uniform and always varied." 

All this is true. Coiffure is an art, and a great 
art, the chief est of the decorative arts, inasmuch 
as its function is to adorn the most perfect of nat- 
ure's works, the beauty of woman. Therefore have 
I ventured to write this little work of reveries and 
reflections on the dressing of hair and the adorn- 
ment of beauty, not with a view to superseding 
the learned theoretical and practical treatises of 
the masters, nor yet with the purpose of compiling 



a history of coiffure, but with the more special ob- 
ject of calling attention to the wealth of example 
and suggestion contained in the paintings and 
sculpture of past ages, and of thus setting forth 
indirectly the principles and conditions upon which 
beautiful coiffure and ornament depend. The doc- 
uments that have been used in the illustration of 
these chapters are for the most part the produc- 
tions of the greatest masters of art, statues and 
pictures that are the glory of the museums of 
Europe, but which have perhaps rarely been re- 
garded hitherto in the special light of models wor- 
thy of study and imitation by the erudite successors 
of Monsieur Lefebvre, or as sources of suo^o^estion 
and inspiration by ladies who are zealous to fulfil 
their mission of emblems of beauty and visions of 
comeliness. 




VVlmpLed and (otidpinci-J^ind 



EGYPT 

That day Thouboui, a rich young widow of San, 
was to entertain her friends at a dinner-party. 
Her house, situated on the outskirts of the town, 
was handsome, and in accordance with her fortune, 
but not extravagantly magnificent. Nevertheless, 
it was remarkable for the beauty of the paintings 
on the walls and ceilings, in which scenes of every- 
day life were depicted in bright colors and in in- 
genious or striking compositions. Thouboui was 
also renowned for the fine arrangement of her fish- 
ponds, and of her gardens planted with rare trees 
and flowers, and adorned with kiosks and alleys 
of trellised verdure. She possessed withal many 
dogs, cats, tame antelopes, and long-legged rose- 
flamingoes, which, in anticipation of the banquet, 
were wandering to and fro in the court-yard of 
the house, impatiently awaiting the arrival of the 



guests, whom they proposed to amuse and coax 
with their famiharities of domestic pets. 

The banquet was prepared in a large room or 
veranda running along one side of the court-yard, 
decorated with tapestries and hangings curiously 
woven and embroidered, and furnished with small 
one-legged tables of precious inlaid woods, arm- 
chairs, stools, footstools, elegant consoles adorned 
with bouquets of blue, white, and rose lotus flow- 
ers, nepenthes, crocus, and myosotis, sideboards 
adorned with glass vessels, enamelled pottery, and 
show-pieces of gold and ivory. Thouboui was 
seated in a room preceding the banqueting-saloon, 
surrounded by her slaves and tire-women, who had 
decked her with necklaces and bracelets, and with 
a pectoral composed of several rows of enamelled 
disks, golden pearls, grains of coralline, and strings 
of fishes, lizards, and beetles of stamped gold. Her 
dress, with full sleeves, was of silk, with a large 
check pattern of carmine and saffron colors, tied 
with a broad girdle round the waist, and terminat- 
ing in a flounce of horizontal stripes of the same 
tints, trimmed with gold fringe, which rustled over 
her gold-embroidered leather shoes as she raised 
her feet to allow a slave to pass a cedar-wood foot- 
stool. Her long black hair was plaited in innu- 
merable thin triple plaits, the ends of which were 



tied too^etlier in twos and threes with woollen 
strings. These plaits hung over her shoulders, 
but were bound together around the head by a 
fillet of gold braid set with precious stones, while 
a blue lotus flower hung over her forehead. The 
shorter hair at the side of the face was interwoven 
with the longer tresses in two or three plaits, 
which were tied together at the ends, and allowed 
to hang down and partly conceal the ear-rings, 
composed of large single gold hoops. Thus her 
smooth low forehead, her full brown cheeks, her 
straight nose, and her finely-chiselled mouth seemed 
to be presented in a frame, as it were a mirror in 
a frame of glossy blue-black hair, relieved by the 
warm scintillations of the gold, the jewels, and the 
brilliant enamels that decorated the rich ornaments 
of her bosom. And in the centre of this mirror 
were two points of dazzling brilliancy, Thouboui's 
eyes, the beauty of Avhich was enhanced by the 
staining of the lids and the blackening of the brows, 
while the size of the eye was apparently increased 
by a surrounding ring of kohol, and by the prolon- 
gation of the oval with a black line of kohol drawn 
towards the ear. 

Thouboui, holding a blue lotus in one hand and 
a copper mirror in the other, looked at her reflect- 
ed image not without anxiety, for Thouboui was in 



love. Her heart yearned towards the young lord 
Satni, who was to be one of her guests, and her 
only desire was to please Satni and win his affec- 
tions. Therefore, not content with the coiffure 
that her slaves had composed, she called for twen- 
ty golden bodkins ^vith spherical heads, Avhich she 
stuck into her hair above the jew^elled fillet. Then 
taking a kohol-box, which a bronze ape held be- 
tween his paws, and dipping into the liquid an ivo- 
ry stick, she proceeded to put more bkick around 
her eyes. Then she had bangles in the form of 
snakes of enamelled gold clasped around her an- 
kles ; and on her fingers, the nails of wdiich were 
reddened with henne, she put many gold rings of 
various designs, wearing five rings on the third 
finger of her left hand, and a ring on each thumb. 

Thouboui was now ready to receive, and the 
tire-Avomen withdrew, w^hile at the same time other 
slaves brought in chess-boards, and the musicians 
and dancing-girls took their places in order to be 
ready when called upon. 

Meanwhile the guests began to arrive, some in 
palanquins and some in carriages, and after slaves 
had poured water over their hands, and offered to 
each one a lotus flower, they entered the room 
where Thouboui sat, saluted her, took seats, and 
conversation began, the ladies taking the lead. 



And, most of the ladies being of a frivolous turn 
of mind, the talk at once drifted towards questions 
of dress. This one would fain know where Thou- 
boui bought her new scarabaeus ring, and how 
much she paid for it. Another was loud in her 




GUINEA-HEN HELMET 



praises of the head-dress worn at a recent recep- 
tion by the lady Ra'hel — a sort of helmet in the 
shape of a guinea-hen, w^ith half-opened wings that 
covered the temples, while the head advanced over 
the forehead, forming a \o\e\Y fe7'ronih'e. 

"This head-dress," continued the lady, "was 
made by Zedikah, a Hebrew^, who has learned to 



surpass our native craftsmen in the art of enamel- 
ling gold. He is the slave of Petoukhan of Mem- 
phis, who made the wedding-crown of Queen Ah- 
hotpou. He has imitated the eyes of the plumage 
most divinely. Unfortunately, we married women 
cannot w^ear such a coiffure ; it is the privilege of 
virgins." 

"The lady Ra'hel is the favorite of Ammon," 
said Thouboui, sadly ; " her love is requited. Her 
wedding with the prince En nana is announced for 
next month." 

" Happy Ra'hel !" cried a lady of ripe years, 
who w^as outrageously painted, and dressed with 
incongruous ostentation. " Happy Ra'hel ! Young 
and beautiful, and affianced to a young and beauti- 
ful prince, while I am draAving near to the thresh- 
old of the good dwelling-place !" 

" You are fishing for compliments, fair Nophre," 
said Thouboui to the lady of ripe years ; " you shall 
have none until the court -councillor Ahmosis ar- 
rives." 

"Have you then invited that flower of gentle- 
manliness ?" 

" Do you doubt my friendship ?" replied the 
hostess. " Should I have invited the bee without 
at the same time inviting the blossom ? But come ! 
Let us have some music ; and as you, Nophre, have 



your thoughts still bent upon amorous exploits, 
Poeri shall sing us some love-songs." 

Thereupon the musicians prepared their harps, 
guitars, and tambourines, the leader of the melody 
applied the double flute to her lips, and, at a sign 
from Poeri, they began to play a plaintive strain 
composed of a few long-drawn notes, accompanied 
by the beating of tambourines and the clapping of 
hands. And Poeri, the beautiful slave, swaying 
her body voluptuously, began to sing abstractedly, 
and without enthusiasm. But gradually, as the 
shrill notes of the flute worked upon her nerves, 
and the vibration of the tambourines thrilled 
through her veins, her eyes brightened, her bos- 
om swelled, and, raising her voice, she declaimed 
in clear tones, joining the words together, and end- 
ing each sentence with prolongations and wailing 
variations upon the last notes : 

" Thy love penetrates my heart as wine mixes 
with water, as perfumes become one with gum, as 
milk mingles with honey." 

Then the double flutes and the harps sounded 
again, and when they were silent the voice resumed: 

''I will lie down in my chamber; I will be sick, 
and the neighbors will come to ask for news of me. 
If my beloved comes with them she will put the 
doctors to shame, for she knows my malady." 



'\t 



Then the double flutes and the harps sounded the 
intermede, and when they were silent the voice re- 
sumed : 

" The villa of my beloved has 
its fountain in front of the house 
door ; the door opens, and my be- 
loved comes out in anger. Oh! 
that I might become the guardian 
of her door, that she might give 
me orders, and that I might hear 
her voice even when she is very 
angry and the children are afraid 
of her!" 

Thouboui, thinking of her pas- 
sion for Satni, forgot her usual po- 
liteness so far as to call for her fa- 
vorite slave Zari, and order her to 
sing an elegy of lost love, without 
asking her guests whether they pre- 
ferred to hear more music rather 
than play chess or draughts. 



'M 



% 



i^ 



^^^ 



In a brief recitative the singer 



set forth the situation. The hero- 
EGYPTiAN LADY luc of thc song cxplaius to her 

well-beloved how she has been to 
set nets to catch the sweetly-perfumed birds of 
Fount ; she asks him to come with her, and prom- 



ises him to let him hear the plaintive cries of her 
beautiful perfumed bird ; but her well-beloved re- 
fuses, and she therefore abandons the idea of her 
fowling excursion, and pours out her soul in a ten- 
der elegy : 

" The cry of the goose sounds plaintive, for it 
has taken the bait-worm ; but thy love repels me, 
and I cannot free myself from it. I will take 
away ni}^ nets and snares. I will say to my mother, 
who sees me come home every day laden with cap- 
tives, ' I no longer set my snares,' for thy love 
makes me prisoner. 

" The goose rises, settles, salutes the granaries 
with its cry ; swarms of birds cross the river, but 
I no longer pay heed to them ; I think of my love 
alone, for my heart is bound to thy heart, and I can- 
not depart from thy perfections. 

" My well-beloved goes out of his house ; he 
passes without giving attention to my love, and 
my heart fails within me. In vain do I see cakes 
and perfumes ; in vain do I perceive oils and es- 
sences ; that which is sweet to the mouth is now 
bitter for me as gall. 

" O my beautiful friend, my desire is to become 
thy wife and the mistress of thy goods ; my 
desire is that thou walk according to thy will 
with thy arm laid upon my arm ; for then I will 



10 



tell to my heart, which is in thy bosom, my suppU- 
cations. 

" If my great friend cometh not during the night, 
I am as one who is in the grave. But thou, art 
thou not health and life, art thou not he who trans- 
mits the joys of health to my heart that seeks thee ? 
• " The voice of the turtle-dove is heard saying : 
'Behold the dawn. Where is my path?' Thou, 
thou art the bird, thou callest me, I have found my 
well-beloved in his chamber, and my heart is re- 
joiced, and I will not escape, but hand in hand I 
will Avalk with thee and be with thee in every 
place, happy if my well-beloved make me the first 
of women, and break not my heart. 

" Ah ! let me go out, for behold my well-beloved 
cometh towards me. My eyes are fixed on the 
ground ; my ear listens to the noise of his footsteps 
on the road, for I have made the love of my well- 
beloved the unique object of desire, and my heart 
is never silent when there is question of him. 

" But he sends me a messenger, whose feet are 
swift to come and to go, to say to me : 'I am not 
free.' O thou, whose strength one never tires of 
contemplating, why break the heart of another 
even unto death ? 

" My heart is so happy in the hope of thy love 
that the front part of my head-dress falls when I 



11 

hasten and run to seek thee, and my chignon is in 
disorder. And yet I assure thee that I adorn my 
hair and seek to make myself ready to please thee 
at all hours." 

This elegy called forth applause, and the tender 
chords of the guests having been awakened, Thou- 
boui was encouraged to display the talent of her 
other singing-women, and, at the suggestion of the 
sentimental lady Nophre, a song of triumphant 
love w^as demanded, and, while dancing-girls as- 




13 



suraed attitudes to accompany the words, Poeri re- 
cited the ''Mirror of the Princess Hathor Mou- 
tiritis," as follows : 

"A palm of love is the Princess Hathor Mou- 
tiritis, a palm among men, a love among women, a 
palm of love excellent among all ^vomen, a maiden 
whose like has never been seen ! 

''Black is her hair, blacker than the black of 
nio-ht, blacker than sloes. 

" Red are her cheeks, redder than the grains of 
red jasper." 

But before Poeri had finished, Zari broke in with 
the '' Floral Chaplet of Love Triumphant," in 
which each strophe begins with the name of a 
plant or flower : 

" O purslam, my heart is in suspense when I am 
in thy arms ! I have used kohol to make my eyes 
more brilliant, and I came close to thee when I saw 
thy love. O master of my heart, how beautiful is 
my hour ! It is an hour of eternity for me when I 
rest with thee ! My heart yearns towards thee ! 

" O artemisia of my w^ ell- beloved, in whose pres- 
ence one feels greater, I am thy favorite ! To thee 
I am like the field where I have planted flowers 
and all kinds of sweet-smelling plants, where I have 
duff charmino^ canals to cool me when the north 
wind blows, a delicious place wherein to walk, my 



13 

hand in thine, with heaving bosom, my heart full of 
joy at walking together we twain. The sound of 
thy voice is like strong wine to me, and by hearing 
it I live: to see thee, and yet to see thee, is of more- 
benefit to me than to eat and to drink ! 

"O sweet-marjoram of my well-beloved, I took 
thy garlands when thou earnest to me and when 
thou didst lie down in my alcove. . . ." 

At this point a great commotion in the ante- 
chamber caused the singer to cease, and the atten- 
tion of all was directed towards the court-yard. 
Preceded by his footmen, Satni had just arrived in 
his new curricle, wearing a faultless new wig, and 
dressed with all the affectation of fashion. Thou- 
boui greeted the young lord with her sweetest smile 
and her most elegant compliments of welcome, and 
herself offered him the blue lotus flower which he 
would hold in his hand during the entertainment. 
Then, all the guests having arrived, the company 
repaired to the dining-room ; the slaves brought in 
necklaces of lotus flowers for each one ; anointed 
the hair of the ladies and the wigs of the gentle- 
men with perfumes and unguents ; placed garlands 
round their heads, and a single full-blown lotus so 
attached that it hung over the forehead. The 
beautiful Poeri was charged with anointing and 
bedecking Lord Satni, and Thouboui bitterly re- 



14 

gretted that etiquette did not allow her to accom- 
plish these acts of civility with her own fair hands. 
But as the feast advanced the Lord Satni became 
very gay and loquacious, and Thouboui, keeping her 
brilliant eyes fixed upon him, half hopeful, half 
melancholy, repeated mentally the words of the 
" Elegy of Lost Love " : 

" O my beautiful friend, my desire is to become 
thy wife and the mistress of thy goods. . . . The 
voice of the turtle-dove is heard saying: 'Behold 
the dawn. Where is my path V Thou, thou art the 
bird, thou callest me, I have found my well-beloved 
in his chamber, and my heart is rejoiced, and I will 
not escape ; but hand in hand I will walk with 
thee, and be with thee in every place, happy if my 
well-beloved make me the first of women, and 
break not my heart." 

Note. — Tiie love-songs intercalated in this sketch were deciphered 
by M. G. Maspero from the papyrus of Turin and the papyrus Harris 
No. 500. 



II 

ASIA 

The most ancient moralist that we know, the 
Egyptian Ptahhotpou, spoke of women as bundles 
of mischief and bags full of lies and wickedness. 
The testhnony of the wall-paintings of Thebes, of 
the bass-reliefs of Louqsor, and of the antique pa- 
pyri written by the remote predecessors of Boccac- 
cio and Sacchetti, goes to show that the ladies of 
old Egypt, with their plaited hair and jewelled 
bosoms, were ardent to attack and weak to resist. 
Princesses, daughters of the priestly class, or peas- 
ants, all resembled the wife of Potiphar, if we may 
believe the ingenious stories, the popular tales, and 
the golden legends which have for centuries amused 
the ennui of the mummies in their silent tombs, 
and which the modern readers of hieroglyphics are 
now^ deciphering for the better comprehension of 
the most ancient and perhaps the gayest of civiliza- 
tions. The Egypt of the Pharaohs is no longer 
figured in our imagination as a land of hieratic con- 
templation, but rather, like our own country, as a 



16 

place of joy and of tears, of hopes and of fears, of 
illusions and emotions — a land peopled by human 
beings like ourselves, who laughed, sang, loved, and 
passed. Modern erudition has even succeeded in 
deciphering love-lyrics that were sung four or five 
thousand years ago on the banks of the Nile — lyr- 
ics in which the ancient Egyptians expressed the 
sentiments that devoured them — sometimes with 
exquisite sweetness, at other times with an exuber- 
ance and a boldness of imagination that alarm our 
more sober Western minds. The Egyptian made 
all nature participate in his amorous emotions — 
the song of the birds, the perfume of flowers, the 
murmur of the breeze. Egyptian love is a mani- 
festation of the joyous and splendid harmony of 
triumphant nature, but at the same time it is tem- 
pered by a veil of sadness, and by the ever-present 
consciousness of the fragility of things and the 
brevity of bliss. 

The Egyptian woman was almost the equal of 
the man ; she was free to come and go, to tempt 
and to be tempted, and she made use of her privi- 
leges. The land of Potiphar's wife is not the land 
either of the harem or of the veil. It is in the pal- 
aces of Assyria that we must look for the harem. 
It is in the valleys of the Euphrates and the Tigris, 
in the cradle of civihzation, that we shall find the 



17 

veil, that emblem of modesty and submission which 
became one of the arms of coquetry ahnost as soon 
as it was invented. The first woman who saw her 
own image reflected in the still waters of the river, 
whether Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel, or Euphrates, was 
the first coquette, and when she began to arrange 
her hair, to smooth it, to hide it with a veil or 
shawl, to conceal one part of her face and to re- 
veal another, the art of coiffure was invented. 

In the story of Abraham and Sarah we read that 
when the patriarch sojourned in Gerar, and passed 
off Sarah as his sister for fear lest the king Abime- 
lech should slay him in order to take her from him, 
Abimelech, warned by a dream of the wrong that 
he was about to do, restored Sarah to her husband 
and gave the two many presents. But before let- 
ting them go, Abimelech ironically reproved Sarah, 
saying, "I have given your brother a thousand 
pieces of silver, in order that in future, wdierever 
you go, you may always have a veil to wear as a 
token to all that you are under the lordship of a 
husband." 

A thousand pieces of silver seems a large sum of 
money to spend on veils, but we may suppose that 
since Tubal -Cain's sister Kaamah first began to 
stitch her veil with colored threads, the art of 
weaving fine muslins and precious cachemire had 



18 



doubtless made great progress, and perhaps already 
achieved perfection. At any rate, the luxury of fine 
linen and exquisite tissues is characteristic of the 
antique Asiatic civilizations. Therefore we may 
suppose that among the presents which Abraham 
sent to the daughter of Bethuel — namely, jewels of 
silver, jewels of gold, and raiment — was included a 
beautiful veil, the same which she took and covered 
herself with as soon as she set eyes upon her lord 
and husband, Isaac, the son of Abraham. From 
the narrative of the Bible we can reconstitute the 
scene in all its imposing Oriental simplicity. The 
caravan, composed of Abraham's servant and his 
men, and Eebekah and her old nurse, has been 
journeying for many days. Towards evening they 
come near the tents, and in the pastures outside the 
encampment they see a man standing alone and 
meditating. And the man lifted up his eyes and 
saw, and, behold, the camels were coming. At the 
same time Abraham's servant recognized his mas- 
ter's son, and, reining his camel towards Rebekah, 
he says to the damsel, " Behold my master's son 
Isaac." Thereupon Rebekah gets down from her 
camel, and carefully covers her head with a veil in 
token of submission, modesty, and respect — a sym- 
bolism which has been maintained in the bridal 
costume of the present day. 




WOMAN OF OULED NAIL TRIBE, ALGERIA 



21 

In the days of the temporal splendor of the Beni- 
Israel the habits of patriarchal simplicity were lost. 
The influence of Egypt and Assyria and commer- 
cial relations with the Phoenicians introduced lux- 
ury of all kinds ; the veil and the art of embroidery 
no longer sufficed to adorn the heads of the beauti- 
ful Jewesses ; jewels, pearls, and gold and silver 
ornaments of the richest kind were employed in 
such abundance that the morose prophets broke 
forth in threats and imprecations. Thus Isaiah in 
a passage of precious nomenclature utters terrible 
menaces : 

" Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and 
walk with stretched -forth necks and wanton eyes, 
walking and mincing as they go, and making a 
tinkling with their feet, therefore the Lord will 
smite the heads of the daughters of Zion with bald- 
ness, and make their bodies naked, so that they 
shall be ashamed. In that day the Lord will take 
away the bravery of the tinkling ornaments about 
their feet, their coifs, their round tires like the 
moon, the ribbons, the bracelets, the perfume-boxes, 
the bonnets, the ornaments of their legs, the ear- 
rings, the head-bands, the finger-rings, the nose-jew- 
els, the changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles, 
and the wimples, and the crisping-pins, the mirrors, 
and the fine linen, and the hoods and the veils." 



22 

From this enumeration of objects we see that the 
Jewesses frizzled their hair in front and let it hang 
down the back in long tresses interwoven with rib- 
bons, or else they curled their hair and let it fall in 
ringlets, with a diadem to keep the forehead free, 
or a fillet inlaid with jewels, or a net-work of gold, 
similar to the coiffure of sequins worn by the Jew- 
esses of the East at the present day. Again, from 
the mention of the bonnet or mitra we see that 
Assyrian fashions were in vogue, the mitra being a 
sort of truncated cone, more or less tall, and en- 
riched with gold, embroidery, and precious stones, 
often with a light and rich veil thrown over the 
whole. Such a coiffure is worn at the present day 
by the Persian and Caucasian women, while among 
the Arab tribes, whether in Egypt, Morocco, or Al- 
geria, the fashions in coiffure of thousands of years 
ago still persist, with their ornaments of crowns, 
turbans, veils, and chains, and all the refinements of 
barbaric luxury mentioned by the prophet. Thus, 
due allowance being made for facial type, we may 
imagine to ourselves the Jewish beauties of old 
attired somewhat in the taste of the women of the 
Ouled ]^ails, Avhose splendid and exuberant head- 
gear is familiar to the modern tourist in Algeria, 
and whose chains and turbans and spangled veils 
add a singular fascination to the flashing eyes and 



23 

the brilliant complexions of the wearers, who, like 
Queen Esther, are ruddy through the perfection of 
their beauty, wdiich is generally heightened by a 
touch of rouge. 

Isaiah also refers to the head-bands or precious 
stones that hang over the forehead, an ornament 
corresponding to the f err o?ii ere which was so fash- 
ionable in Europe during the Middle Ages and the 
Eenaissance, and which was happily revived during 
the Romantic movement in the first half of the 
present century. The same beautiful ornament, 
frequently seen in the portraits of Leonardo, Man- 
tegna, and the great Venetian painters, is also 
spoken of by the prophet Ezekiel in these words 
addressed to the personification of Jerusalem : 

" I clothed thee also with broidered work, and 
shod thee with badgers' skin, and I girded thee 
about with fine linen, and I covered thee with silk. 
I decked thee also with ornaments, and I put brace- 
lets upon thine hands and a chain on thy neck, 
and I put a jewel on thy forehead, and ear-rings 
in thine ears, and a beautiful crown upon thine 
head." 

So too the virtuous Judith braided her hair and 
put a tire or mitra upon her head when she started 
from Bethulia clad in garments of gladness, wear- 
ing bracelets, chains, ear-rings, and all her orna- 



24 



ments, decked out bravely to allure the ej^es of all 
men that should see her, and more particularly to 
fascinate the eyes of Holofernes. Likewise Queen 
Esther, Avhen she entered the apadana of the great 
King Artaxerxes, had spared no pains upon her 
toilet, but '' being gloriously adorned she took two 
maids with her; and upon the one she leaned as 
carrying herself daintily, and the other followed, 
bearing up her train. And she was ruddy through 
the perfection of her beauty, and her countenance 
w^as cheerful and very amiable ; but her heart was 
in anguish for fear." 

Veils, diadems, tiaras, mitras, fillets, crowns ; 
such are the elements which the art of coiffure 
owes to the Asiatics, to those nations who created 
the long-vanished splendor of Nineveh and Baby- 
lon, those cities of parks and palaces where gen- 
erations of proud warriors lived in the ennui of 
unlimited luxury and fabulous power. Of Assyr- 
ian w^omen, as of the Jewesses w^ho adopted many 
of their fashions, we have but very few graphic 
records. The Jews, from their fear of the temp- 
tations of idolatry, refrained from depicting the 
human image. The Assyrians, who confined their 
Avomen within the walls of the harem, treatins" 
them as instruments of pleasure whose duty con- 
sisted solely in being beautiful and obedient to 



i 



f^. 




)MAN OF OULED NAIL TKIBE, ALGERIA 



27 



their lord's caprice, covered the walls of their pal- 
aces with representations of their exploits in war 
or in the chase, but appear to have thought their 
queens and princesses unworthy, or perhaps too 
sacred, to be exposed to the public gaze even in 
linear effigy. However, from the magnificence 
and the complication of the coiffure of the Assyr- 
ian men, we may safely conclude that the coiffure 
of the women was no less magnificent, and in con- 
firmation of this hypothesis we may contemplate a 
gigantic slab of stone in the Assyrian transept of 
the British Museum, on which is carved a figure of 
the winged goddess Ishtar. This figure, discov- 
ered by Layard in the Northwest palace of Nira- 
rud, dates from the reign of Asshurnazirpal, 884 
B. c, and represents a goddess with four wings, 
Ishtar or Ashtaroth, holding a necklace, and wear- 
ing bracelets, ear-rings, an elaborate series of orna- 
ments on her bosom, and on her head a mitra or 
bonnet. The hair is waved and frizzed at the ends, 
while down the back of the goddess hangs a waved 
switch bound round with a ribbon, below which 
the hair is frizzed or curled into a ball adorned 
with two silk tassels. 

So we may figure to ourselves Semiramis, the 
warlike queen, av earing a tall mitra constellated 
with jewels so brilliant that men's eyes could not 



28 

gaze upon it untroubled ; so we may imagine her 
hair descending in spiral tresses over her scarlet 
peplos and glistening with gold-dust, while in each 
little curl there lurked a pearl, and at the end of 
the torsade an infinite number of diamonds at- 
tached to the frizzed hair simulated a nebula of 
lioht — as it were a comet, of which the torsade 
was the tail. And over this resplendent coiffure 
was thrown a veil of gauze so thin that it seemed 
like a light vapor; but yet this veil of mist, far 
from dimming the brilliancy of the incomparable 
beauty which it enveloped, enhanced it still more, 
for the gauze was bespangled with rubies and dia- 
monds so that the sight of it was like the starry 
heavens, and the poets compared their magnificent 
queen to the shimmering effulgence of the galaxy 
whose countless stars no mao'e has ever numbered. 



Ill 

ATHENS 

The sculptor Euphorion had arrived earlier than 
usual at his studio in the Street of the Fig Trees, 
near the Temple of Theseus. It was high midsum- 
mer ; the heat was excessive, and Euphorion in his 
uneasy slumber had dreamed that a terrible acci- 
dent had befallen the bass-relief wdnch he was 
modelling for the rich Eoman collector Lucius 
Crassus. In his sleep Euphorion had seen the clay 
begin to steam ; then gradually the composition 
disappeared behind a veil of vapor ; and when the 
vapor vanished in turn there remained of the work 
nothing but the iron framework or backing of the 
bass-relief on the stand, and a conical mound of 
dust on the floor. Such was the force of the heat 
that it had literally dried and pulverized the model- 
ling clay and annihilated the labor of many weeks. 

Euphorion awoke in a cold perspiration, and as 
the sun was alread}^ above the horizon, he girded 
up his tunic, hurried out of his house, and hastened 
across the city of Athens to his studio as fast as 



33 



his legs could carry him. " If by some mischance 
the dream should prove to be true ! What a hor- 
rid nightmare !" thought the sculptor to himself as 
he walked, and from time to time ran, with the 
earl}^ scavenging dogs at his heels as he passed. 
'' Accursed dream of evil omen! Although Glycon 
of Cos, the Sophist, maintains that we must inter- 
pret dreams contrariwise. Perhaps some messen- 
ger of the gods, Lord Eros himself, maybe, has 
come secretly by night to finish my figure. . . ." 

Meanwhile Euphorion had reached the end of 
the Street of the Fig Trees, where his studio was 




VENUS OF GNIDOS WITH THE DOUBLE FILLET 



33 

situated, and after turning the key with feverish 
anxiety he flung open the door, and behold the 
bass-relief was intact, just as he had left it on the 
previous evening ! On the left hand were the two 
ladies, and on the right Melitta roughly sketched 
in with the cage full of little Cupids at her feet. 
Thank Heaven ! The dream was but an empty 
dream. 

However, Euphorion proceeded to take the usual 
precautions. He went out into the garden to draw 
water from the well, and with a whisk of laurel 
branches he sprinkled the clay with fresh spray, 
and carefully placed wet rags on the parts where 
he had not to work that day. ''Let us hope that 
Lucius Crassus will be pleased," said Euphorion to 
himself. " The subject is perhaps too amiable, too 
frivolous, too much in the taste of the day. How- 
ever, Lucius wishes to have it in terra-cotta, and 
not in eternal marble. It will be but an ephemeral 
work, and the Muses will pardon me, seeing that I 
have done my best. And, after all, I am not re- 
sponsible if Eros, the great lord of Love, has be- 
come the plaything of rhetoricians and story-tellers, 
and sculptors too, like me, who have to work to 
please the rich Romans. Let the Muses hold Anac- 
reon guilty, and not me." 

'' Hail, Euphorion ! All hail ! May the Muses 



34 

guide your chisel, and grant that your servant 
Melitta may do nothing which is not agreeable, 
and say nothing but that which is pleasing!" 

Euphorion turned with a smile of welcome at 
the sound of these words of greeting and of suave 
presage, and replied : 

" Hail, Melitta ! All hail, most beautiful of Mile- 
sian models, and most exact — nay, more than ex- 
act, for it is not yet the hour." 

*' True," answered Melitta, entering the room ; 
" but Cheiron, the baker, told me that he saw you 
running along the street just now, so I knew that 
you must be here and ready to work." 

" Sw^eet Melitta, I came in wild haste before the 
hour because I had a terrible dream this night." 
And Euphorion related to the girl his strange night- 
mare, at which she laughed lightly and mocked the 
sculptor. Meanwhile she took off her petasos — a 
fiat straw hat with a round brim and a little conical 
crow^n — untied the fillet that bound her chignon, 
and let her blue-black hair float over her shoul- 
ders. 

" How do you wish me to arrange my hair ?" 
asked Melitta, ready to assume the necessary post- 
ure as the sculptor might desire. 

" This morning," said Euphorion, " w^e are going 
to w^ork on the figure of the woman selling Loves. 



35 



You must sit on a stool with the cage before you. 
You have just opened the door and let out one lit- 
tle winged Love. Your costume is good. Your 
hair must be arranged simply — "' 

" With a wreath of flowering ivy leaves, like the 
Muse Thalia?" 

" Ko, no ; quite simply." 

" Then tied in a bow on the top, with a small 
chignon on the nape, and tresses over the shoul- 
ders?" 

" Ko, that is too ornate even for a seller of Loves. 
Tie your hair in a simple chignon, with the wavy 
tresses carried back rather loosely, just covering 
the tops of the ears, and bound with a double fillet, 
the coiffure of Kypris and of Artemis, the chaste 
huntress." 

" The very good and mrij heautifid goddess, as 
the Athenians have engraved on the pedestal of 
her statue," added Melitta, as she arranged her 
hair with the aid of a bronze mirror which Eu- 
phorion held before her, performing the functions 
of a handmaiden. " There ! One more hair-pin ! 
Ah ! Can't I wear a diadem ?" 

"IS'o, Melitta; respect the purity of the contour 
of your pretty head. To-day we want neither dia- 
dems nor crowns, nor veils nor turbans, nor cyl- 
indrical Asiatic coiffures, nor Cypriote curls row 




THE MUSE THALIA 



above row, with high chignon, but simply the 
noble and severe Athenian coiffure, which the 
great sculptors of old have immortalized." 

"You would not have much success as a ladies' 



mm 

mm 




V 






Ik 



A QUEEN WITH THE CYPRIOTE CURLS 



39 

hair-dresser, Euphorion, for I can see that 3^ou con- 
demn all the new fashions." 

"That is possible, Mehtta," replied the sculptor, 
as he began to work on his bass-relief. With nim- 
ble fingers and the enthusiasm of happy labor, 
Euphorion pursued his task for a long while in 
silence, and Melitta sat listening to the chirping 
of the ci gales, carefully retaining the pose in 
which she had been placed. Then, still working 
with his clay, Euphorion resumed an interrupted 
train of thought, and said, as much for his own 
satisfaction as for Melitta's benefit : 

" We Hellenes have always been admirers of 
pure beauty discreetly adorned, but not sacrificed 
to its own adornment. In the days of the Median 
wars the Spartans were the finest men in Greece, 
and their wives and daughters the handsomest 
women ; indeed, so great was their physical per- 
fection that all the Greeks, even we Athenians, ac- 
cepted generals from among them without mur- 
muring. The Spartans were the masters of the 
Hellenes in gymnastics and noble dancing, and 
although they themselves never excelled in the 
arts, it is nevertheless to them that we Athenians 
owe our artistic excellence, more especially our ex- 
cellence in sculpture ; for without the perfection 
^vhich gymnastics give to the body we should have 



40 



had no beautiful models to sculp. Kemember the 
story of Agesilaos, who, in order to encourage his 
soldiers, had some Persian prisoners stripped be- 
fore them. When they saw the white and flabby 

flesh of the Asiatics, 
undeveloped and un- 
perfected by gymnas- 
tics, the Hellenes burst 
out laughing, and 
marched onward full 
of disdain for such 
an effeminate enemy. 
Our Hellenic women 
of old had inborn taste 
and elegance, and in 
spite of new-fangled 
Asiatic fashions, our 
Athenian ladies — " 
"—dye their hair blue, my dear Euphorion," 
broke in Melitta— " blue like the sky, blue like the 
sea, blue with rose reflections like the breast of a 
dove ; they powder their hair with gold and white 
and red ; they paint their eyebrows like the Asiat- 
ics ; they wear their semi-transparent robes like the 
Asiatics; they curl their hair with irons; they 
wear nets of golden cords, diadems inlaid with 
precious stones, wigs, veils, high coiffures. Eu- 




A VENUS WITH THE BOW 



41 



pliorion, clear master, you are not in the move- 
ment." 

"And you, Melitta. you are too much in the 
movement, for I would wager from the sight of 
those dark circles under your eyes that you went 
to sup last night with some young lord in company 
with Sophists and poetasters and hetairas, your 
countrywomen from Miletus." 

" You have the power of divination of a Del- 
phian seer, Euphorion. I did sup at the house of 
Charicles of Alexandria, a rich young stranger who 
has lately come to Athens to spend his patri- 
mony ; at least so says Cleon the Cynic. Charicles 
loves the poets and the story-tellers. He has a 
beautiful manuscript of the Milesian tales of Aris- 
tides." 

" And after supper, I suppose, you listened to 
that corrupt and' frivolous literature?" asked Eu- 
phorion, with indignation. 

" Yes, dear master," replied Melitta, witli win- 
ning effrontery, "and we all enjoyed the stories 
immensely. Oh ! do not be angry. We listened 
to some pieces by Meleager also, your favorite 
Meleager. Dorothea recited them. Oh ! if you 
could have seen her, Euphorion, with her hair 
floating loose in the Corinthian style, a little cap of 
scarlet silk on the top of her head, and a fringe of 




LEKANE FOUND AT KERTCH 



gold medallions all round. She looked charming, 
and she recited some verses that I never heard be- 
fore. Listen, Euphorion : ' My cup has smiled with 
joy. Why ? Because it has touched the eloquent 
mouth of Zenophile. Happy cup ! Would that its 
lips might drink up my soul at one draught 1' " 

" And about his mistress, Heliodora, has Me- 
leager written nothing new?" asked Euphorion. 



43 

" Dorothea has received nothing new from her 
friend, the Tyrian Sebta V 

" Yes, yes, a sweet madrigal," replied Melitta. 
" Listen : ' I will Avreathe white violets. I will 
wreathe the soft narcissus with green myrtle. I 
wall wreathe the laughing lily and the suave crocus, 
the blue hyacinth and the rose dear to Eros, that 
all may form a crown of beauty to deck the grace 
of Heliodora's hair.' " 

" It is a dainty piece indeed," said Euphorion, 
approvingly, " and your young lips pronounce be- 
comingly those flowery words. Enough. Let us 
rest awhile. Here are honey cakes and wine. Go 
gather some grapes from the vine that shades the 
doorway, for the noonday heat is fierce, and my 
hands are slack to mould the clay. Go, Melitta, 
sweet flower of Miletus." 

And Melitta rose from the bench on which she 
had been sitting, and, taking up her hat, she put it 
on her head to protect herself from the hot sun. 
But as she passed she saw on the table a cu- 
rious lekane, or flat cup with a cover, on which 
were painted scenes connected with the toilet : a 
lady dressed, wearing the himation Avhich covers 
the lower part of her face,^s waiting for her com- 
panion who is examining her coiffure in a mirror ; 
two ladies who have just been bathing, attended 



44 

by Loves and tire- women ; a young woman, over 
whose abundant hair an attendant is pouring per- 
fumed water ; another woman seated resignedly on 
a stool while a companion dresses her carefully 
combed hair; a woman twisting her hair into 
switches while two others stand and watch her. 

"What a beautiful cup!" exclaimed Melitta. 
•' Give it to me, Euphorion, and I will be your 
model for a year — for two years !" 

"Alas, Melitta, it is not mine to give. It is an 
antique cup three hundred years old, which Lucius 
Crassus bought when he was in Athens last spring. 
He left it in my care, together with this perfume- 
bottle in the form of Aphrodite Anadyomene ris- 
ing from the sea." 

Melitta took the bottle in her hands, admired 
the cordon of pearls passing over the bosom of the 
figure, the rich necklace, the crown with its gilt 
rosettes placed so delicatel}^ on the curled hair, the 
dark blue of the eves, the gold of the crown, of the 
hair, and of the necklace, and, above all, the red of 
the inside of the shell setting off the roseate pearli- 
ness of the flesh. 

" Oh, Euphorion, what an exquisite bottle ! Would 
that it were mine ! Would I were rich ! How 
happy must she be who enjoys the favor of Lucius 
Crassus !" 



45 



With a sigh and a wistful look at the precious 
objects, Melitta went forth to gather grapes, and 
when she returned she sat down in silence, and 




APHRODITE ANADTOMENE 



dreamily nibbled a honey cake in front of Eu- 
phorion. After a while Melitta, looking shyly at 
the sculptor, said, 



46 

" Lucius Crassus is coming back to Athens soon, 
is he not?" 

'' Yes ; on his way from Alexandria to Kome." 

"From Alexandria? Then perhaps he knows 
Charicles?" 

" Doubtless." 

" He will go to sup with Charicles. I shall see 
him, perhaps. Oh, if I only had beautiful apparel, 
some Tyrian veils, and a jewelled diadem hke Doro- 
thea!" 

"Melitta, you are allowing your mind to revel in 
the romantic intrigues dear to Aristides the Mi- 
lesian. I read your thoughts. I divine your vault- 
ino; ambition. You would fain set the snares of 
your young beauty in the path of Lucius Crassus. 
For shame, Melitta, for shame !" 

" Pardon, Euphorion," replied the blushing Me- 
litta. "I was but joking." 

" Kay, so was I joking too, Melitta. Go your 
wanton ways, and may Kypris and Eros protect 
you. Life is but a span. Be gay, be joyous and 
happy while you may, for, as the poet says : 

' ' ' Short is the rose's bloom ; another morn 
No rose is there: you find instead a thorn.'" 



IV 

ROME 

It was in the spring of the year a.d. 208. Ter- 
tullian had recently bidden farewell to the brethren 
in Carthage, his native town, and had settled in 
Rome, with a view to taking part in the contro- 
versy between the partisans of Praxeas and those 
of Montanus that was then agitating the Koman 
Church. For the moment, however, he had not 
declared himself, although he had no hesitation in 
sympathizing with the rigidly ascetic principles of 
the Montanists, rather than with the lax and indul- 
gent views of those who were not disposed to look 
upon the world as a monastic association, or upon 
the practice of Christianity as a perpetual struggle 
against human nature. Meanwhile the great pole- 
mist, comfortably lodged in the house of a deacon 
of the Church, Proxenes, who in former years had 
been a steward in the employ of the good emperor 
Marcus Aurelius, was reading the epistles of St. 
Paul and making notes for one of his minor trea- 
tises, De Cultu Feininaymiii. 



48 



/« 



The first battle was about to be fought between 
Christian piety and the spirit of worldliness, be- 
tween raonasticism and society, between renuncia- 
tion and the joy of living. Tertullian, accustomed 

as he was to the luxury 
of Carthage, had never- 
theless been scandalized 
by the still greater lux- 
ury of Rome, and espe- 
cially by the splendor 
of the costume and the 
personal ornaments of 
the Roman ladies, whose 
example appeared to him 
to be exercising a dis- 
astrous influence upon 
many Christian women. 
Therefore the moment 
seemed to him oppor- 
tune to determine once for all what was the be- 
coming costume for Christian widows, deacon- 
esses, wives, and virgins, and with this object he 
was copying his texts. First of all, the precepts of 
St. Paul in his Epistle to Timothy, where he says 
that Christian women should adorn themselves " in 
modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety ; 
not with broidered hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly 




DANCING-WOMAN WITH SIMPLE 
FILLET 



49 

array" ; and then the passage in the Epistle to 
the Corinthians, where St. Paul requires Christian 
women to wear their hair covered with a veil, say- 
ing : " Judge in yourselves : Is it comely that a 
woman pray unto God uncovered ? Doth not even 
nature itself teach you, that if a man have long 
hair, it is a shame unto him? But if a woman have 
long hair, it is a glory to her ; for her hair is given 
her for a covering." Finally St. Paul, in order 
to cut short all objections, states categorically that 
the Church insists upon women being veiled. It is 
not the Christian custom, he says, for w^omen to 
wear their hair uncovered. " But if any man seem 
to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither 
the churches of God." 

The traditions established by the early Christians 
restored the use of the simple opaque veil, forming 
a sort of hood in place of any complicated architect- 
ure of plaits and chignons, and it was generally 
accepted that matrons must wear veils in church 
and in all religious assemblies. On the other hand, 
the girls and the unmarried women seem to have re- 
belled instinctively against a custom Avhich obliged 
them to hide a portion of the arms of beauty. 
Hence arose the question of the veiling of vir- 
gins, which Tertullian was about to treat. And 
taking up his tablets, he began to compose his 



50 

argument, beginning with a vigorous reprimand of 
those weaker sisters who were worldly enough to 
disregard the precepts of St. Paul and who re- 
fused to wear veils. " They abandon the head- 
dress of childhood," he wrote, " but only to consult 
their looking-glasses, to soften their skin with 
essences, and perhaps even to paint their faces. 
They wear mantles and different kinds of shoes, and 
they have altogether the look of married women, 
except that they wear their hair without the cov- 
ering of a veil, in order to display the elegance of 
their coiffure and captivate the eyes of men. But 
the mind of a virgin ought not to be concerned 
with pleasing men. At every age there is danger. 
Clothe yourselves with the arms of modesty ; for- 
tify yourselves with the rampart of modesty ; sur- 
round your head with a wall that will guarantee 
you against the attacks of others." 

TertuUian paused and read over what he had 
Avritten, but without satisfaction. True these were 
but notes which his ardent African eloquence 
would vivify and adorn with sharp touches. He 
w^ould speak also of the error of the married 
women, whose irrepressible coquetry had invented 
caps and diminutive bonnets of fine linen, which 
they wore instead of the real veil that covers and 
conceals the hair. Nevertheless, TertuUian felt 




DANCING-WOMAN WITH RINGLETS IN FEONT 



that his brain was heavy, and that his prose did 
not flow easily. The literary man began to criti- 
cise the polemist. The brilliant pupil of the rheto- 
ricians of Carthage reasserted himself in the person 
of the grave and ascetic doctor. The subject of 
woman and the ornaments of woman had sufficed 
to fill him with a desire to treat it with graceful- 
ness of language and with all the art of the accom- 
plished rhetorician, for in reality Tertullian, mighty 
genius, vigorous thinker, and vehemently ascetic 
Christian as he was, remained throughout his life 
an incorrigible man of letters, a literary artist 
delighting in ingenious metaphors, refined erudi- 
tion, and subtle phraseology. 

And so Tertullian began to reflect, and to recall 
to mind the methods and precepts of the literary 
schools of Carthage, Avhereas in similar circum- 
stances a Christian doctor of less scholastic training 
would have simply prayed for inspiration, or merely 
plodded along in a commonplace but sincere argu- 
ment. The more Tertullian thought about his sub- 
ject, the less ascetic his thoughts became, and the 
stronger his curiosity. " In order to present my 
argument vigorously," he reasoned to himself, " I 
must be armed with instances ; I must have an 
abundance of recent observation ; I must refresh 
those souvenirs of worldly frivolity which I ac- 



54 

quired in the days when I was still unregenerate. 
I will go and take a walk through the streets and 
observe the fashions, so that m}^ prose will gain in 
color and sharpness. I need a good deal of descrip- 
tion in this treatise." 

TertuUian laid aside his tablets and started to go 
out, but at the door of the house he met his host, 
Proxenes, and being yet unfamiliar with the habits 
of Roman society, he explained to him his embar- 
rassment and asked for advice. Where could he 
see the fashionable ladies ? Where could he conven- 
iently get information about the artifices of coif- 
fure and toilet ? 

Proxenes, whose ascetic ardor was less violent 
than that of TertuUian, and whose attitude towards 
the pagans was conciliatory rather than aggressive, 
gave the Carthaginian doctor some hints for his 
guidance through the streets, and gradually becom- 
ing himself interested in the subject, he bethought 
himself of a man who would be of the greatest use 
to TertuUian, one Apicius Naso, formerly jeweller 
to the Empress Faustina, and one of those profess- 
ors of hair-dressing who trained the slaves of the 
rich Roman ladies, and taught tliem the theory and 
practice of coiffure. Naso, now advanced in life 
and wealthy, had remained deeply interested in the 
arts to which he owed his fortune. Although 




EMPRESS FAUSTINA 



practising the ancient religion, he was a good and 
gentle man, liberal-minded, a Platonist in philosoph- 
ical opinions. Proxenes had known him when he 
was in the service of Marcus Aurelius. If Tertul- 
lian had no objection, Proxenes would introduce 
him to Naso. 

Tertullian accepted the offer with joy, and the 
doctor and the deacon hastened through the 
crowded streets, crossed the river, and pursued 
their way to a villa in the outskirts of the city, 
where Apicius Xaso lived in a forest of roses. The 
old jeweller welcomed Tertullian to his home with 
every mark of honor, saying that he should feel 
greatly flattered to show his frivolous collection of 
feminine ornaments to so profound a scholar and 
so pious a teacher of virtue. 

Thereupon Apicius led the way into a long gal- 
lery lined with pedestals, on which were placed 
marble busts of famous Roman ladies, the flesh and 
the draperies delicately tinted, while the hair and 
the ornaments were likewise colored discreetly. 
There was the Empress Faustina, the wife of An- 
toninus Pius, wearing an exquisite coiffure of 
waved hair, a simple fillet, and a high-placed chig- 
non of braids coiled on the crown ; Didia Clara, 
with low chignon and hair waved in the Greek 
style ; Julia, daughter of Titus, with a high 



58 



chignon and a mass of little curls surrounding the 
forehead ; the same Julia with a round chignon of 
plaits, a tall frontal of small curls rising like a dia- 
dem above the head, small regular curls round the 
forehead, and in front of each ear three small ring- 
lets. Julia Aquilia Severa, with her hair parted 
in the middle and failing in heavy loops, caught 
up and tied over the nape ; Domitia, with her 
hair frizzled into an infinite number of curls all 
over her head ; a head of Juno, with waved hair, 
a diadem, a chignon, and a string of amber beads 
passing in front of the diadem and falling be- 
hind the ears, with ringlets coiled around ; and 
many other busts with beautiful or eccentric coif- 
fures, while at the end of the gallery were two 
statues of dancino^-women, one with short rino^lets 
and a simple fillet binding the head, and the 
other with short ringlets in front and long ring- 
lets behind, the head being likewise bound with 
a fillet. All these busts Tertullian examined with 
curiosity, as Apicius, playing with a ball of pure 
rock-crystal, that he used in the Eastern man- 
ner to keep his hands cool and fresh, explained to 
him the characteristics of the coiffure ; the manner 
of setting the diadems in the hair ; the different 
systems of plaiting, curling with irons, waving and 
frizzling hair ; the methods of making bows of hair 



61 



and of interweaving plaits with strings of pearls ; 
the various shades of blond and red hair which 
came into fashion after the conquest of the Ger- 
mans ; the caustic soap and dyes used to change 
the color of the hair ; the manufacture of wigs 
and false chignons, and the fickleness of fashion. 
In proof of this latter phenomenon, Apicius called 
the attention of TertuUian to the fact that the 
coijffure of several of the busts in his collection was 
movable, so that when the fashion changed a new 
coiffure could be substituted in place of the old 
one, and the lady be spared the grief of seeing a 
portrait of herself not absolutely a la mode, or so 
obviously old-fashioned that it would give disas- 
trous information regarding her age. Finally, Api- 
cius pointed out the bust of a lady tastefully veiled, 
with just a little of the hair visible around the fore- 
head, a concession to coquetry which matrons some- 
times abused. "This coiffure, with a veil com- 
pletely concealing the hair and faUing over the 
shoulders, is that of the Yestal Yirgins," added 
Apicius. " It is the ideal Eoman coiffure, and the 
model which the typical Koman matron affects to 
imitate." 

Apicius then showed Tertullian a series of combs 
of box-wood and of ivory daintily carved, various 
kinds of curling-irons, and many models of long 



62 



hair-pins used to hold the coiffure in position, some 
of them having a hole at each end, through which 
the fillet Avas passed and tied. The heads of these 
pins were curiously chiselled in the form of figures 
and groups of Yenus and Cupid, Cupid and Psyche, 
Isis, and other subjects. Apicius showed one pin 
which was a hollow tube destined to contain poi- 
son, and remarked with a smile that, as a collector, 
he would be glad to believe that this was the pin 
with which Cleopatra poisoned herself, but, as a 
jeweller, he was unable to forget that he had had 
the pin manufactured for a Corinthian hetaira, who 
had left it on his hands. 

Apicius next opened a case of drawers, in each 
of which was a mirror of polished metal, the mir- 
ror side of silver, the back of gold chased in ad- 
mirable designs and set around with precious 
stones. Then he showed toilet-cases in silver, fans, 
bracelets, necklaces, cameos, ear-rings, and orna- 
ments of gold, explaining the variations of Koman 
taste in jewelry, and afiirming his conviction that 
in the matter of ornaments, as of coiffure, the true 
models were to be sought in the inventions of the 
Athenians and the Corinthians ; " for our Eoman 
ladies," he said, "though insatiable in the pursuit of 
novelty and ingenious in the imagination of luxur}^, 
are not always remarkable for their artistic taste." 




VESTAL VIRGIN 



65 



After some further talk with Apicius about the 
luxury of women, Tertullian and Proxenes took 
leave of the amiable specialist, and returned through 
the city, both the doctor and the deacon feeling 
their powers of observation mightily sharpened, so 
far as concerned feminine elegance, by the explana- 
tions and illustrations which Apicius had submitted 
to them. Tertullian stopped to look in all the 
shops where ladies' ornaments and attire were dis- 
played, and Proxenes from time to time, good dea- 
con as he was, could not refrain from marvelling 
at the splendor of some beauty or another that 
passed them, reclining in a litter borne by Cappa- 
docian slaves. Proxenes even ventured to suggest 
to Tertullian that it would be a hard thing for the 
Church to conquer the luxury of the world, and 
that perhaps the Church would make more prose- 
lytes by indulgence than by rigorism. But the 
Carthaginian was so absorbed in his literary reflec- 
tions, and in the mental trituration of all the ob- 
servations that he had just made, that he did not 
combat the backsliding opinions which Proxenes 
had expressed, but, answering him evasively, hur- 
ried along, and as soon as they reached the house 
thanked Proxenes, retired to his room, and resumed 
his polemical prose with renewed ardor at the point 
where he had left it a few hours before. And as 



66 



Apicius's remarks about paint and hair-dyes and 
their consequences were uppermost in his mind, he 
proceeded to write : 

"I see some women who are all the time occu- 
pied with applying washes to their hair to give it 
a blond color. They seem to be almost ashamed 
of their father-land, and to blush with regret be- 
cause they were not born in Gaul or Germany. A 
sad presage is this coiffure, a vain and gloomy 
beauty which at last ends in ugliness. Is it not 
true that by the use of these washes and perfumes 
women gradually lose their hair ? Is it not a fact 
that their brains are affected by these strange lo- 
tions, and by the excessive heat of the sun to which 
they expose their hair to dry it? A Christian 
woman makes her head a sort of altar, on which 
she pours libations of perfumery in profusion. 

" ' See,' they say, ' how we change white or black 
hair into blond, so that it may look more beautiful ' ; 
and there comes a time when they spare no pains 
to change their white hair into black when they 
have reached fatal old age, and are full of desola- 
tion because they have lived too long. 

" Of what avail for salvation is this wearisome 
care that you take to adorn your head ? 

" What ! Cannot you leave your hair in peace ? 
At one time you are curling your hair, at another 




JULIA, DAUGHTER OP TITUS 



you are uncurling it. At one time you are lifting 
it up, and at another you are letting it down. One 
day you braid your hair, and the next day you let 
it float over your shoulders with affected negligence ; 
and then another day you load your head with an 
enormous heap of false hair, which you arrange in 
the form of a bonnet to imprison your head, or in 
the form of a pyramid so as to show the neck un- 
covered. No one, says Jesus Christ, can add any- 
thing to Avhat he is, and yet you would add some- 
thing by piling up on your head tufts of hair loaded 
with ornaments like the boss of a shield. If you 
do not blush through the w^eight of this burden, at 
least you must blush for its unworthiness. Do not 
place upon a head that has been sanctified by bap- 
tism the remains of some wretch who has died in 
debauchery, or of some criminal who has expiated 
his crimes on the scaffold. May it please God that 
on the day when the Christians triumph, I, un- 
worthy as I am, may be permitted to raise my 
head to your proud height, that I may see if you 
come to life again with your paint, your rouge, 
your perfumes, and your superb hair." 

At this moment Proxenes came into the room, 
followed by his daughter Priscilla, who carried 
on a tray the frugal repast, which was all that 
the austere TertuUian allowed himself — bread, len- 



70 

tils, cheese, and fruit. And Proxenes held a manu- 
script in his hand, the Book of Enoch, and respect- 
fully begging the permission of his illustrious guest, 
he called his attention to the enumeration of the 
chiefs of those angels who united themselves with 
the daughters of men, and begot giants, each three 
hundred cubits high. " These giants devoured all 
the work of man, until they could not be satiated," 
read Proxenes from his scroll. '' Then they turned 
against men to devour them. And they began to 
put to death beasts, reptiles, and fish, and to eat 
their flesh and drink their blood. Then the earth 
reproved the unjust. Azaziel taught men to make 
swords, shields, and corselets ; he taught them to 
make mirrors and bracelets and ornaments, and 
the usage of perfumes, and of precious stones of all 
colors. Impiety increased, shamelessness waxed 
greater, and all transgressed and walked in the path 
of corruption." 

" Yes, my good Proxenes," answered Tertullian, 
" the only garment that befits woman is mourning, 
for it was through woman that sin came into the 
world ; and you, Priscilla, beware of the evil ex- 
ample of those of your sex w^ho walk about with 
their heads uncovered, and wear silk dresses with 
many plaits that rustle as they walk, who have 
their necks adorned with many rows of pearls, and 




DIDIA CLARA 



73 



their arms decked with bracelets like the pagan 
priestesses of Bellona and Ceres. Hands that are 
accustomed to bracelets are not strong to bear the 
weight of chains. Legs that have been swathed 
with bands of silk will scarcely be able to endure 
the pain of shackles. A head covered with emer- 
alds and diamonds will, I fear, bow basely beneath 
the sword of martyrdom with which we are threat- 
ened at every hour." 



THE MIDDLE AGES 

The object desired in the arrangement of hair 
may be either beauty or richness, artistic comeK- 
ness or barbaric splendor, charm obtained by means 
of the elements which nature provides, or magnifi- 
cence due to the profusion of extraneous ornaments. 
The most admirable coiffures of the Greek and the 
Eoman civilizations are the simplest. The natural 
chie-non, the waved hair bound Avith a narrow fillet, 
or at the utmost adorned with a diadem — such is 
the ideal and such the artistic standard to which 
fashion returns century after century, whenever its 
vao^aries become excessive and end in ridicule or in- 
convenience. The progress of fashion is from too 
little to too much, from simplicity to extravagance, 
from no ornament at all to ornament that overpow- 
ers everything else. The moment an ornament 
comes into use its importance begins to grow, and 
continues growing until its luxuriance overwhelms 
and entirely conceals what it was originally in- 
tended to adorn. One jewel in the hair attracts 



another and another; a golden diadem invites a 
crown, and a crown suggests a hehnet enriched 
with diamonds and precious stones ; even the veil, 
the emblem of modesty, destined to conceal, is 
made a flag and a banner of coquetry, and in its 
various and innumerable transformations it becomes 
wimple, turban, coif, or bonnet, and in the end a 
mere pretext for ornamentation. 

The contrast with the artistic simplicity of 
Greek and Roman fashion is furnished by the stiff 
garments of heavy silk embroidered with pearls, 
precious stones, and ornaments of gold and colored 
glass which were invented by Byzantine taste, and 
by the prodigious coiffures worn by the Empress 
Theodora and her suite, as depicted in the famous 
mosaics of Eavenna. Byzantine fashion left scarce- 
ly any hair visible. The head was loaded with 
pads and rolls of rich stuffs embellished with pearls 
and precious stones, on the top of which were worn 
heavy crowns wuth pendeloques of pearls. The 
neck and bosom were loaded with chains of gold 
enriched with precious stones. The very shoes 
w^ere embroidered with pearls. In short, Byzan- 
tine taste, which is generally considered to be bad 
taste, carried to the extreme point the research for 
splendor and magnificence, and dressed women to 
look like Oriental idols. E'evertheless, it must not 



76 

be forgotten that in the civilization of modern 
Europe Byzantine art played a great and beneficent 
role ; it inspired and guided that taste for luxury 
and that desire of beauty which produced the ar- 
chitecture of mediaeval Italy, and gave conscious- 
ness to the artistic Renaissance in the time of Char- 
lemagne. 

The history of hair-dressing in Europe begins with 
long tresses floating over the shoulders and held in 
place by a simple head- band. The next step is the 
division of the tresses by a parting, and the plait- 
ing and lacing of each switch with ribbon so that it 
forms a rope. These two ropes may hang in front 
of the wearer, or over the shoulders and down the 
back. Then, again, the two switches produced by 
the parting may be gathered into one long braided 
pigtail, as is shown in the accompanying illus- 
tration, which is a portrait of a lady by Piero 
della Francesca (1415-92). Furthermore, the two 
primitive switches may be coiled up or otherwise 
arranged at the sides, at the back, or on the top of 
the head. Finally, ornamentation is obtained by 
the development of such elements as are contained 
in veils, coils, jewels, and crowns. 

The picture by Piero della Francesca, although 
it is of the fifteenth century, will serve perhaps 
better than more archaic works to explain the 




PORTRAIT OF A LA.DY, BY PIERO BELLA FRANCESCA. 



progression above indicated. Let us see how this 
coiffure is executed. First of all, the hair is parted 
in the middle of the head, and so hangs in flow- 
ing tresses like a veil over the shoulders and back. 
If the coiffure were destined to remain thus, some 
fillet, circle, or diadem would be needed to keep 
the hair in place and prevent it falling over the 
eyes. Hence the crowns or "chapels," used by 
both men and women, which we see represented 
in mediaeval sculpture and in the miniatures of the 
twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. As 
for the crowns, properly so called, they were worn 
in the Middle Ages by kings, princes, and counts 
only, and their form varied according to the fan- 
c}^ of the maker and the wearer, there being no 
difference between men's crowns and women's 
crowns except in size. The heraldic crowns, such 
as they are classed nowadays, were not formally 
distinguished until the sixteenth century. Girls, 
both noble and other, and those women whose 
rank did not allow them to wear crowns, wore 
gold or silver circles, either of plain metal or else 
enriched with enamel, precious stones, or orna- 
ments. Furthermore, the use of crowns of natu- 
ral flowers, common to Greek and Koman antiq- 
uity, persisted until the time of the Eenaissance, 
as we read in the romance of Lancelot, who wore 



a chaplet of fresh roses on his head every day of 
the year except on Fridays and on the eve of great 
fetes, " il ne fut jour ou Lancelot, ou hiver ou ete, 
n'eust au matin un chapel de fresches roses sur la 
teste, fors seulement au vendredi et aux vigilles 
de hautes festes." This custom suggested to the 
goldsmiths a dainty device for " chapels," whereby 
they wrought flowers of gold, which were sewn 
on a band of ribbon or galloon. Precious stones 
and jewels, too, were sewn on galloon in like man- 
ner, and so the " chapel" of the lady depicted by 
Piero della Francesca is composed of a narrow 
fillet of velvet, to which are attached thirteen ame- 
thysts, one of which occupies the centre of her 
forehead. Finally the fillet was shorn of all orna- 
ment except one precious stone or jewel, which it 
served merely to fix in the centre of a limpid brow. 
Thus in Mantegna's portrait of the Duchess Eliza- 
beth Gonzaga we see in the centre of the forehead 
a jewelled scorpion, emblem of logic, while a- simi- 
lar isolated jewel is worn by Lucrezia Crivelli in 
her portrait in the Louvre by Leonardo da Yinci, 
commonly known as " La Belle Ferronniere " — 
the name of a "chapel" of this kind being in 
French ferron7iie re. The usage of the f err o?i7iiere 
was revived in the beginning of the present cen- 
tury, wdien the Romantic movement in art was at 



81 



its height, and a charming example is given in 
our illustration, engraved from an exquisite lith- 
ograph by Grevedon (1783-1849). The lady por- 
trayed by Grevedon wears her ferronniere high 
on account of the chignon, the position of which 
necessarily determines the inclination of the fil- 
let or circle. The fillet, too, is rather wide. 
With a low chignon the fillet would bind the head 
horizontally, and the jewel would then fall in the 
centre of the forehead. However, the usage of 
i\\Q ferronniere seems to be thoroughly consecrated 
b}" the traditions of adornment of beaut}^, and it 
is strange that the women of the present day have 
rarely ventured to revive the fashion. On the 
other hand, it is true that piquant and unquiet 
beauty could not wear a ferronniere. This orna- 
ment requires calm and regular features and dig- 
nity of gesture and attitude; it is the ornament 
of that fair bride of whom Matthew Arnold says : 

" On her front did glow 
Youth like a star ; and what to youth belong — 
Gay raiment, sparkling gauds, elation strong." 

But to return from this digression to the por- 
trait by Piero della Francesca. Having parted 
the hair, and left the front tresses sufiiciently loose 
to cover the ears, we tie the two switches together 



82 

above the nape of the neck, and proceed to plait 
the pigtail and bind it round with ribbons. Then, 
in order to hide the parting at the back of the 
head, we place a little coif of richly embroidered 
samite, constructed on a wire frame, and adorned 
with two heavy jewels and droppers, which take 
the place of ear-rings. These jew^els were perhaps 
mounted on pins, which would in that case serve 
to hold the coif in position, in addition to the cir- 
cle or "chapel" that completes the coiffure. In 
the embroidered cap and the rich jewelry used in 
this example we remark the remnants of Byzan- 
tine influence, which became so powerful in Eu- 
rope in the twelfth century, when the crusades 
placed the West into close and constant communi- 
cation with the East, and brought into fashion the 
rich tissues and elaborate ornaments not only of 
the Byzantines, but also of the Arabs. 

Another portrait by Piero della Francesca, that 
of the Duchess of TJrbino, in the Uffizi Gallery at 
Florence, will enable us to comprehend the ar- 
rangement of the primitive switches at the sides 
of the head. This coiffure is simple in theory, but 
somewhat complex in execution. First of all the 
short hair at the edge of the cheeks is reserved 
and carefully curled with an iron. The long hair 
is parted in the middle and behind so as to form 




A LADY WITH A FERRONNIERE 



85 



two switches, one on each side, and each switch is 
bound round with ribbon, the end alone beino: left 
loose. The switch thus bound is coiled and fixed 
with a brooch, behind which the loose end floats. 
The division of the hair obtained in this way 
leaves a parting visible at the back of the head, 
and in order to conceal this feature, and also in 
order to re-establish the contour destroyed by the 
displacement and compression of the volume of 
hair, a veil is fixed so as to form a sort of arti- 
ficial chignon and to fall over the neck. Finally, 
a rich jewel, like a diminutive crown, is attached 
on the top of the head to a ribbon, which ap- 
pears to pass behind the ears and be connected 
with a fine cord that is seen under the lady's 
chin. Every detail of this coiffure is rich and 
rare, and the ensemble is worthily completed by 
the magnificent carcanet and pendant of precious 
stones that clasps the neck and falls over the 
bosom. 

To follow the transformations of the veil which 
was so strongly recommended by St. Paul and Ter- 
tuUian would lead us into endless developments. 
The theme is, indeed, curious and interesting, and 
those who would write a complete history of coif- 
fure need to study it with minuteness. Such, 
however, is not our object; we have no preten- 



86 

sions to write a history of coiffure, but merely to 
select from artistic monuments examples of coif- 
fure and ornament that remain stamped with the 
eternal imprint of style ; our business is with w^hat 
is beautiful rather than with what is curious, and 
our design is to present to the fair reader not the 
results of archaBological research, but the suggest- 
ions for elegance contained in visions of feminine 
beauty and character selected from among the 
great works of the art of the past. In the history 
of feminine coiffure there is to be noted a perpet- 
ual and inevitable hostility between the ornament 
and the thing adorned, between the hair and the 
veil and its developments, between the natural 
elements of coiffure and the artificial elements. 
The tendency of ornament is to spread and mo- 
nopolize. The veil, destined to conceal, is grad- 
ually made transparent, and finally abolished, un- 
til one day it reappears in a diminutive and 
insidious form, and once more grows and grows, 
until its monopoly has yet again to be destroyed, 
and the hair delivered from its prison-house. Thus, 
in the Middle Ages, the veil in the form of onen- 
tonnieres^ gorgieres, and guimjpes gradually enker- 
chiefed the hair, and concealed it entirely, produc- 
ing, on the one hand, those close coiffures of which 
the souvenir remains in the costume of the various 




THE DUCHESS OF URBINO 



89 

orders of nuns and sisters of mercy, and, on the 
other hand, the voluminous escqffions and the high- 
peaked hennins or steeple head-dresses, which 
formed as it were rich cushions and gay masts, 
whereon floating veils were displayed and rigged. 
Yet other developments of the veil are nets, which 
were used for centuries in ancient Eome, and re- 
vived in the fashions of the Middle Ages. We 
may even venture to consider the capuchon or 
hood to be a development of the veil, for in its 
simplest form the hood is a primitive veil or man- 
telet tied round the neck under the chin so as to 
protect the head. Evidently we could call atten- 
tion to innumerable forms of hoods, hennins, and 
escoffions that are quaint, amusing, graceful, and 
even suggestive; but with few exceptions these 
coiffures are so exceptional, so ephemeral, and gen- 
erally so eccentric that the study of them would 
lead us away from our subject into the too fasci- 
nating domain of archaeological curiosity. It will 
suffice for us to remember that the veil and the 
hood have finally gained semi -independence, and 
that nowadays, in the form of hats and bonnets, 
they are the province of the milliner rather than 
of the hair -dresser proper. While formerly the 
coiffure of a lady was essentially the same in-doors 
and out -doors, nowadays a lady, when she goes 



90 



out, adds to her ordinary coiffure the additional 
ornaments which her milliner provides. The 
Duchess of Urbino walked in the streets with her 
hair dressed as we see it in her picture. The lady 
with a pigtail, whose portrait we have reproduced, 
also went abroad with no other head-gear than her 
diadem and her embroidered cap, which is, how- 
ever, an embryo bonnet. But a hundred 3^ears 
later the two girls whom Bernard van Orley 
(1490-1560) painted at prayer with their moth- 
er, as we see in a grand picture in the Brussels 
Museum, wore regular bonnets, which would re- 
quire small change in order to adapt them to the 
modern taste. 




PORTRAIT OF TWO GIRLS, BY BERNARD VAN ORLEY 



VI 
FLORENCE 

In his famous book The Courtier^ that flower of 
sixteenth - century culture, the Count Baldassar 
Castighone maintains that the courtier, or, as we 
should now say, the well-educated man or the per- 
fect gentleman, ought to have some skill in paint- 
ing, not only because it is a noble art, attended 
with much credit and advantage, but because it 
helps him to judge of the excellency of statues, 
both ancient and modern, of vessels, buildings, 
medals, engravings, and such like, and, above all 
things, because it gives him a better taste and 
knowledge of living beauty, not only in the sweet- 
ness of the countenance, but in the just proportion 
of all the parts, as w^ell in men as in all other ani- 
mals. ^' You see, then," continues our author, 
" that the knowledge of painting is the occasion of 
an infinite deal of pleasure, which they may frame 
some guess of who view and enjoy the beauty of 
some fair one to that degree that they imagine 
themselves in Paradise; and this without the 



94 



knowledge of painting, which had they but ac- 
quired, it would mightily enhance their satisfac- 
tion ; for then they would, more perfectly un- 
derstand the beauty which raises such pleasing 
transport in their breasts." 

This excellent advice applies to the adornment 
of beaut}^ as well as to beauty itself. A knowl- 
edge of painting, and. more particularly a knowl- 
edge of the noblest pictures that the world has 
produced, mightily enhances the satisfaction of 
those who delight in the adornment of beauty, be- 
cause it enables them more perfectly to under- 
stand and more successfully to pursue their ideal. 
As beauty is a gift worthy of sedulous cultivation, 
so is the adornment of beauty a subject that de- 
mands and repays minute study ; and the best 
text-books in which such study may be made are 
surely statues and pictures, for none have devoted 
more thouo^ht and invention to adornino: the beau- 
ty of women than sculptors and painters. As 
there are several sorts of beauty, a woman ought 
to know what dress best becomes her. So Cas- 
tiglione ingeniously remarks that if she perceives 
herself to be a gay and sprightly beauty, "she 
ought so to accommodate her gestures, words, and 
clothes as may all contribute to heighten the 
charms of it. In the same manner let her who is 



95 

of a mild and grave temperament by all suitable 
ways improve what nature has given her. So, 
likewise, whether she be fatter or leaner than or- 
dinary, or fair or brown, let her use the assistance 
of dress, but let all art therein be concealed as 
much as possible ; let her appear easy and genteel, 
without any affectation or taking pains." This 
again is good advice, and a knowledge of pictures 
will greatly help a woman to take advantage of it. 
More especially will the study of painting educate 
her eye to the appreciation of harmony of colors, 
of grace of line, of elegance of silhouette, and of 
dignity of bearing. 

A woman whose memory possesses the por- 
traits of Yandyck, Titian, and Bronzino can never 
consent to be badly dressed, however simple and 
inexpensive her garments may be. The haunt- 
ing souvenir of the female figures of Luini, 
Leonardo, and Botticelli is a sure preservative 
against awkward gestures, ungraceful bearing, and 
want of suavity of all kinds. The frequenta- 
tion of the noble painters of Italy, Flanders, 
and France is an encouragement to look upon 
the adornment of beauty not as a matter of vanity, 
much less as the business of the Tempter, accord- 
ing to the ideas of the ascetics, but rather as a 
manifestation of culture, a triumph of civilization, 



96 

like the transformation of the simple eglantine 
into the resplendent rose. 

On the other hand, there are partisans of beauty 
unadorned. That fascinating but often self-con- 
tradictory thinker, Ernest Kenan, remarking the 
total absence of jewels, and even of flowers, in the 
traditional adornment of the women of his native 
Brittany, has written a curious page to express his 
disapproval of the use of ornaments altogether. 
With antique nudity, this philosopher argues, jew- 
elry had a raison cVetre^ and Greece, taking advan- 
tage of certain errors of the East, ventured to 
cope with that most delicate problem of adorning 
the masterpiece of nature — a truly beautiful wom- 
an. But in our cold climates, and with the cur- 
rent ideas of Christian modesty, jewelry is out of 
place. What have these ornaments of savages 
and Bedouines to do with the one and only im- 
portant thing, namely, the sweetness and inno- 
cence of the looks ? Can virtue and candor be ex- 
pressed by jewels ? Has there ever been invented 
a jewel for the eyes? It is true there is the odious 
henne ; but has a woman who respects herself ever 
used henne ? What a horrible idea it is to blacken 
the golden balustrade of the celestial Jerusalem, 
and to defile the edges of that sacred fountain in 
the depths of which w^e see God and his paradise ! 



97 



M. Eenan goes even further, and protests against 
color in the service of beauty, maintaining that 
black and white suffice, because, better than all 
ornaments, they leave room for dreams of amorous 
and veiled flesh. But enough of paradoxes. The 
practice of humanity from time immemorial speaks 
in favor both of color and adornment, and it is in 
these conditions that the greatest artists have al- 
ways represented beauty. So far as concerns the 
ways of arranging women's hair, no artists have at 
any time shown themselves so various as the Ital- 
ian painters of the fifteenth and sixteenth centu- 
ries, more especially Piero della Francesca, Sandro 
Botticelli, Leonardo da Yinci, Titian, Bronzino, and 
the other great Venetians. Doubtless it may be 
urged that in those days, when fashion varied not 
only from one country to another, but from one 
province and even from one town to another, a 
painter could never be at a loss for models. It is 
true that Italian women, like Italian men, enjoyed 
complete liberty in the arrangement of their hair ; 
there was no one fashion to which all conformed, 
as is more or less the case in the civilized world 
of to-day ; on the contrary, absolute license reigned 
in the domain of fashion ; but such was the artis- 
tic instinct of this favored epoch that taste never 
had to suffer from excess of liberty. I^everthe- 



98 

less, the coiffures that were invented by the native 
genius of coquetry, or by the imaginings of rival 
milliners, were certainly not the only source from 
which the painters drew inspiration. On the con- 
trary, the painters were themselves the chief pro- 
fessors of the art of coiffure, and the verj^ greatest 
devoted much attention to the invention of beauti- 
ful arrano^ements and adornments for the hair of 
their models. Thus Yasari, speaking of Leonardo 
da Yinci's admirable skill in drawing, mentions 
with enthusiasm "some heads of women whose 
coiffures w^ere so graceful and beautiful that Leo- 
nardo always imitated them " — coiffures which we 
may be sure were composed by Leonardo himself, 
for the drawings in question still exist to charm 
us by their absolute beauty and complete origi- 
nality. 

One of these drawings at Florence represents 
the favorite Milanese type which Leonardo has 
immortahzed in his picture of the Yirgin and St. 
Anne, the hair falling in rolling waves, almost in 
rino^lets, over the shoulders, the shorter front locks 
finely crimped, and brushed forward over the 
cheeks so as to conceal the ears, a small veil cover- 
ing the nape, and on the top of the head a flat 
chignon of coiled braids bound round with a broad 
band or plaited fillet, over which is a diadem with 




HEAD OF A GRACE BY BOTTICELLI 



101 

a circular jewel ov ferronniere in the centre flanked 
by small wings, while on each side above the ear 
two bunches of frizzed hair escape from beneath 
the band, and from the summit of the chignon an- 
other bunch of feathery hair rises like a natural 
aigrette. In the Museum of Venice another head 
by Leonardo is represented with a crown or fillet 
of vine branches and leaves, and the hair falhng in 
ample ringlets on each side of the head below the fil- 
let. In the Ambrosian Library at Milan is a drawing 
by Leonardo of a very simple coiffure in which the 
hair is parted in the middle ; from the front tresses 
are taken wherewith to make three triple plaits 
or braids, the first one starting on a level with the 
eyebrows, the one behind it a little lower, and the 
third one a little lower still ; then these three braids 
are looped up one above the other and tied at the 
back of the head, thus holding in position the long- 
hair that falls in waves behind over the neck. 
Other drawings at Vienna, or in the royal collec- 
tion at Windsor, show exquisite arrangements of 
braided hair covered or draped with transparent 
veils, and finally at AVindsor there is a large 
drawing and four sketches of a singular coiffure 
which seems to have greatly fascinated Leonardo. 
The suggestion evidently came from the head of 
the Gorgon Medusa, with horrors armed and curls 






FROM A DKAWING BY LEONAUDO DA VINCI 



of hissing snakes, as Homer has described her in 
his Odyssey. Leonardo, however, has suppressed 
the horror, and retained onl}- a strange serpentine 
arabesque, which forms the leitmotiv of this com- 
position of interwoven braids and floating locks, 



103 



one of the most fantastic and complicated that the 
artist invented, yet not more complicated than 
many coiffures that may be seen in the portraits 
and pictures of the time. 

Beauty and originality of coiffure play a great 
role in the paintings of Sandro Botticelli (1447- 
1510). In his picture of " Calumny," painted from 
Lucian's description of a picture by Apelles, doubt- 
less as translated by the artist's friend and adviser 
Leone Battista Alberti, a scene of hair-dressing 
forms one of the incidents. Alberti's translation 
runs thus : 

" There is a personage w^ith long ears with two 
Avomen, one on each side, namely, Ignorance and 
Superstition. Calumny advances in the form of a 
beautiful woman, whose face, however, is hardened 
by cunning. In her left hand she holds a lighted 
torch, and with the other hand she drags along by 
the hair a young man who lifts up his hands heav- 
enward. Her guide is a pale, hideous man with a 
savage face. Two other women, companions of 
Calumny, are busied with adorning their mistress ; 
these are Treachery and Fraud. Behind them is 
Kepentance in sordid clothes, followed by Truth, 
modest and pure." 

The fragment of this great picture reproduced 
in our engraving represents the two beautiful 



104 



maidens, Treachery and Fraud, dressing the hair of 
Calumny. Fraud binds her chignon with a ribbon, 
while Treachery places flowers in her hair. The 
coiffure of Treachery herself consists of long float- 
ing locks, a head-band and veil, and a chignon of 
braided hair partly enkerchiefed. But perhaps the 
most beautiful coiffures imagined by Botticelli are 
those of the three Graces in the picture in the acad- 
emy at Florence, commonly known as an ''Alle- 
gory of Spring." The arrangement of the hair 
of the central figure is peculiarly elegant, con- 
sisting entirely of waves and torsades, and one 
braid passing over the top of the head, the whole 
without extraneous ornamentation. The figure 
on the right wears a more elaborate coiffure, with 
a braided chignon, and two long braids Avhich 
are wound round the loose switches on each side 
and joined over the bosom, and attached to a rich 
brooch or pendant, while the front hair is crimped 
and frizzed, and carried forward so as to hide the 
ears entirely, and the loose tresses on the crown en- 
twined with strings of pearls and jewelled pins. 

A more richly ornate coiffure is that painted by 
Botticelli in the beautiful profile portrait now in 
the Stiidel Kunst-Institut at Frankfort, represent- 
ing that great Florentine lady, Lucrezia Tornabuoni, 
wife of Piero dei Medici, mother of Lorenzo the 



107 



Magnificent, and grandmother of Pope Leo X. 
The back hair is gathered in a great switch, and 
laced with ribbon as far down as the nape, where 




WAVES AND TORSADES 



it is divided and plaited in two heavy braids orna- 
mented with pearls, which follow the contours of 
the corsage, and are knotted on the bosom; an- 
other pearl-embroidered braid surrounds the head 
vertically, and is coiled into a fantastic chignon; 



108 



the line of the parting is marked by a row of 
pearls, and from it fall three fine braids of different 
lenofths knotted so that the ends hano^ loose like 
tassels ; these three pendent braids are laced to- 
gether with strings of small pearls, while on the top 
of the head is a splendid flower-shaped jewel and 
an aigrette of peacocks' feathers tilted backward. 
The strange beauty and fantastic richness of this 
coiffure of hair and pearls — hair braided, hair 
waved, hair falling in silky tassels — cannot be de- 
scribed ; the picture must be seen in order that the 
reader may comprehend the supreme taste of the 
artist, and the magnificent simplicity — if we may 
so express it — of the arrangement of the hair in 
such a manner that the form of the head is sedu- 
lously respected, and the purity of the silhouette, 
both of the head and of the neck, always evident 
beneath the natural veil of golden tresses. This 
respect of the natural form of the head is a point 
to which too much attention cannot be paid, for 
by this sio:n we recoo^nize the coiffure of the true 

JO a 

artist, and by this sign are the inventions of the 
great painters of the Italian Eenaissance distin- 
guished from the monstrous or quaintly voluminous 
coiffures which the vagaries of fashion, uncon- 
trolled by good taste, have invented in unartistic 
epochs both before and since. The beauty of the 




FROM A FliESCO BY PIERO DELLA FRANCESCA 



1 



Ill 



coiffure which aims purely at bringing into relief 
the splendor of the hair, as compared with that in 
which the head-dress predominates, is admirably il- 
lustrated by the contrast of the two heads by Bot- 
ticelli with the heads in the accompanying en- 
graving, taken from a fresco by Piero della Fran- 
cesca, representing Italian ladies of the fifteenth 
century wearing the actual coiffures which the 
fashion of the hour decreed. The fresco is a grand 
w^ork of art, full of character and mystery, but the 
coiffures are ephemeral, and at the best merely 
curious. On the other hand, the types of feminine 
beauty which the artist has portrayed are so strik- 
ing, the features so pure, and the necks so swanlike, 
that we are inclined to believe that the queer cap 
worn by one lady is beautiful too, and to be ready 
to maintain that the escoffioii worn by the other is 
a marvel of good taste, and the veil thrown over it 
a miracle of elegance — so true is it that there are 
certain undulating contours, a certain ovalness of 
face, a certain fineness in the chiselling of lips, cer- 
tain droo])ings of the eyelids, certain bendings of 
the head, which ravish us beyond expression, and 
hold us fascinated for hours in the contemplation 
of portraits of vanished beauty. 



VII 

VENICE 

In the picture by Bronzino (1501-70) reproduced 
in our engraving tlie coiffure is simple in arrange- 
ment, the hair being merely combed out, braided, 
and gathered in a net. The net itself, however, 
was of extreme richness, and in harmony with the 
magnificent jewelled ornamentation of the cor- 
sage, a net of golden threads strung with pearls. 
Such a costume as this lady wears, all cloth- of- 
gold, brocaded silk, damask, embroidery, and pre- 
cious stones, is a monument of a vanished civiliza- 
tion which our modest modern luxury must ever 
despair of repeating; it is the gown of a lady 
who lived in a favored land where everything is 
smiling, and where J^ature herself preaches gran- 
deur and magnificence ; it is the sumptuous garb 
of a princess whose life was passed in one of 
those antique Italian palaces which, gloomy or 
ruined as they now are, still speak eloquently of 
the resplendent and superb existence of the Sea- 
las, the Yiscontis, the Strozzis, the Gonzagas, the 



113 



Medicis, the mighty lords of Yerona, Mantua, 
and Florence. Feminine costume in Italy in the 
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries harmonized per- 
fectly with the architecture of these palaces, whose 
colonnades were draped with the precious products 
of the looms of Venice and the East. Ample 
and noble in form, it was rich in material and 
gorgeous in ornamentation. Favored by nature 
and fortune, Italy was singularly favored by the 
Muses before and during the early Eenaissance, 
and her women all possessed instinctive good taste. 
But, above all things, the great artists and the men 
of letters exercised a sovereign controlling influ- 
ence over fashion, and preserved it from those wild 
caprices to which it is exposed when the ladies 
have no other guide than the vulgar fashion jour- 
nal. Thus it happens that while the pictures by 
the oldest Flemish and French masters are, as a 
rule, merely curious from the point of view of the 
student of feminine elegance, those of the old Ital- 
ian masters are full of suggestiveness. A coiffure 
by Botticelli, or a gown by Ghirlandajo, is as 
much a touchstone of eternal elegance as the head- 
dress of a Greek statue or the drapery of a Tana- 
gra statuette. 

At the same time the Italian literary men de- 
voted much attention to the study of feminine cos- 



114 

tume and of the adornment of beauty, and the 
poets abound in delicate analyses and notations of 
all that is exquisite in the aspect and manners of 
women. Firenzuola's Dialogue on the Beauty of 
Women is a masterpiece of elegant language and 
ingenious observation. Lodovico Dolce's Venetian 
dialogue, Delia Institutione delle Donne^ is likewise 
of extreme interest ; and although one cannot rec- 
ommend the reading of Alessandro Poccolomini's 
book, La hella Oreanza delle Donne, from the 
point of view of edification, yet we should be 
sorry not to possess in a discreet corner of our 
library this vivacious little manual of feminine el- 
egance in the sixteenth centur}^ As for Casti- 
glione's book on the perfect lady and the perfect 
gentleman according to the ideas of the refined 
Court of Urbino, we have already intimated the 
hio-h esteem in which we hold the author of this 
incomparable work. Indeed, how could we not 
esteem this noble and cultivated author, without 
whose judgment and approbation Eaphael and 
Buonarotti never thought their works perfect? 
How can the Count Baldassar's name ever fade 
from the memory of fair women ? No writer has 
ever spoken more nobly of the social role of the 
sex, inasmuch as he has made out woman to be 
the prime origin of all the arts of civilization in 




ELEONORA OF TOLEDO, BY BRONZING 



117 



the following passage, which we beg leave to quote 
from the Third Book of his Courtier. 

'^ Are you not sensible," asks Castiglione, " that 
whatever exercises are agreeable or taking in the 
world are so only for the sake of women 1 Who 
would care to dance or to learn all the graceful 
motions of the body but to please them ? Who 
has any other end than this in making himself 
perfect in music ? Who would ever write verses, 
especially in a vulgar language, but to express the 
affections raised by women ? Consider ^vhat valu- 
able poems, both in Greek and Latin, would the 
w^orld be deprived of if the poets had no value for 
that sex ! And, to omit all others, what a loss 
should we have had if Francis Petrarch, whose 
love-songs in our language are so divinely fine, had 
wholly confined himself to Latin, as he certainly 
would if the love of Laura had not been in the 
way !" 

It is indeed a curious truth that if the love of 
Laura had not been in the w^ay, as Castiglione 
quaintly says, Petrarch would have confined him- 
self wholly to Latin, and the modern European 
languages might have remained undeveloped and 
non-literary. So Dante, in his Vita Nuova^ com- 
menting upon one of his own love-sonnets, says : 
" And, indeed, it is not a great number of years 



118 



since poetry began to be made in the vulgar 
tongue ; the writing of rhymes in spoken language 
corresponding to the writing in metre of Latin 
verse, by a certain analogy. And I say that it is 
but a little Avhile, because if we examine the lan- 
guage of oco and the language of si {i.e., the lan- 
guages of Provence and Tuscany) we shall not find 
in those tongues any written thing of an earlier 
date than the last hundred and fifty years. Also 
the reason why certain of a very mean sort ob- 
tained at the first some fame as poets is, that be- 
fore them no man had written verses in the lan- 
guage of 5^/"and of these the first was moved to 
the writing of such verses by the wish to make 
himself understood of a certain lady unto whom 
Latin poetry was difficult." 

And the good poets who ventured to write in 
the vulgar tongue, wishing to please their lady- 
loves, unto whom Latin poetry was difficult, began 
at once to sing the charms of fair hair. Thus 
Fazio degli TJberti (1326-60), in a canzone so ex- 
cellent that it has been attributed to Dante, tracing 
the portrait of his lady, Angiola of Verona, says : 

"I look at the crisp golden-threaded hair 

Whereof, to thrall my heart, Love twists a uet. 
Using at limes a string of pearls for bait, 
And sometimes with a single rose therein. 



119 



I look at the amorous beautiful mouth, 

The spacious forehead which her locks enclose, 
The small white teeth, the straight and shapely nose. 
And the clear brows of a sweet pencilling. 



"I look at her white easy neck, so well 

From shoulders and from bosom lifted out ; 
And at her round cleft chin, which bej^ond doubt 
No fancy in the world could have designed. 



"I look at the large arms, so lithe and round, 
At the hands which are white and rosy too, 
At the long fingers, clasped and woven through. 
Bright with the ring which one of them doth wear."* 

So Guido Cavalcanti, who was Dante's senior by 
some fifteen years, in a ballad on a shepherd-maid 
whom he met one day within a copse, describes her 

coming 

"with waving tresses pale and bright, 
With rosy cheer, and loving eyes of flame, 
Guiding the lambs beneath her wand aright." 

Cino da Pistoia (1270-1337), in his lament for 
Selveggia, cries : 

"Ay me, alas! the beautiful bright hair 
That shed reflected gold 
O'er the green growths on either side the way." 

* Translation of D. G. Rossetti. 



120 

Boccaccio, in his sonnet on his last sight of Fia- 
metta, describes how 

" Round her red garland and her golden hair 
I saw a fire about Fiametta's head." 

And in another playful sonnet, which, as the trans- 
lator, Dante Gabriel Kossetti, has observed, recalls 
by the beauty of its color the painted pastorals of 
Giorgione, Boccaccio again dwells upon the fasci- 
nation of golden hair. But this sonnet is so dainty 
that we must quote it entirely in Rossetti's ren- 
dering : 

" OF THREE GIRLS AND OF THEIR TALK 

" By a clear well, within a little field 

Full of green grass and flowers of every hue, 
Sat three young girls, relating (as I knew) 
Their loves. And each had twined a bough to shield 
Her lovely face ; and the green leaves did yield 
The golden hair their shadow ; while the two 
Sweet colors mingled, both blown lightly through 
With a soft wind forever stirr'd and still'd. 
After a little while one of them said 
(I heard her) : * Think ! If ere the next hour struck 
Each of our lovers should come here to-day, 
Think you that we should fly or feel afraid ?' 
To whom the others answered : ' From such luck 
A girl would be a fool to run away.'" 

As for Petrarch, he will hear of none but golden 
locks. His Laura has black eyes and a beautiful 
white face, and in the second canzone he declares 




VIOLANTE, BY PALMA VECCHIO 



123 



that " never was golden hair twisted into a blond 
braid by a lady so beautiful as she w^ho has de- 
prived me of all freedom of will." Elsewhere he 
says, "The blond-hair neighbor of the eyes that 
lead my years to so speedy an end, eclipses the 
brilliancy of gold, and of topazes on snow in the 
sunshine." And, again, he speaks of " the golden 
tresses that ought to fill the sun with boundless 
jealousy" ; and elsewhere, " in the golden hair of 
Laura, Love has hidden the bonds with Avhich he 
grasps me" ; and again : " Her head was like fine 
gold, her face white as snow, her eyelashes were 
black as ebony, and her eyes were two stars ; there- 
fore Love did not stretch his bow in vain.". . . 
" The suave breeze unfolds and tosses the gold 
that Love has spun and woven with his hand ; by 
the beautiful eyes of Laura and by her tresses 
he enthralls my weary heart.". . . " The forehead 
and the hair so beautiful that, to see them in sum- 
mer at noonday, they surpass the sun in brill- 
iancy.". . . " The eyes of Avhich I have spoken so 
warmly, and the arms and the hands and the feet 
and the face that ravished me and made me some- 
thing distinct from all other men, the crimped hair 
shining like pure gold, and the flash of angelic 
laughter that made for me an earthly paradise, are 
now a little dust." Then, finally, when Laura ap- 



124 

pears to Petrarch for the last time in a dream, the 
poet exclaims, with the obstinacy of eternal ad- 
miration, " Are these the blond tresses and the 
golden braids that hold me still in bondage, and 
are these the eyes that were my sun f 

Such being the unanimity of the poets of the 
day, golden hair became necessarily fashionable. 
There was no alternative, the more so as the testi- 
mony of the ancients was also found to be in favor 
of blond locks. From Homer to Apuleius the ad- 
miration of fair hair persists. Aphrodite was a 
blonde, so was the beautiful Byrrhene and the sou- 
brette Photis, whose charms Apuleius has daintily 
described in a passage which everybody knows, 
but which, doubtless, few remember. Blond, too, 
was Milton's Eve, who 

"as a veil down to the slender waist 
Her unadorned golden tresses wore 
Dishevel'd, but in wanton ringlets waved 
As the vine curls her tendrils." 

Therefore Firenzuola, in his description of the 
beauty of the ideal woman of the epoch of the 
Eenaissance in Italy, requires her to have beauti- 
ful hair, iSne, soft, and blond, either the color of 
gold or of honey, or like the bright rays of the 
resplendent sun. This blond hair must be crisp, 



. 125 

abundant, and long, as we see it in the coiffures 
of Botticelli's figures, and especially in the por- 
traits by the Yenetian painter Palma Yecchio 
(1480-1548), who delights to depict his beautiful 
daughter Yiolante with her luxuriant hair hang- 
ing in long and voluminous tresses, adorned with a 
simple fillet of ribbon, or w^ith a string of pearls 
and a jewel over the forehead. This same fig- 
ure of Yiolante appears constantly in the pictures 
of Titian, for whom she frequently posed, and 
w^ho, like Palma, delights in golden hair. Titian, 
however, generally paints a composed coiffure, dis- 
creetly adorned with strings of pearls and a jewel 
or two, rather than loose flowing tresses. But 
both Titian and Palma, and all the Yenetians of 
the early Eenaissance, paint blond hair ; Botti- 
celli's w^omen, too, are all blondes ; and yet blond 
hair was the exception in Italy. Evidently the 
Italian ladies of the fifteenth and sixteenth centu- 
ries corrected nature, as the Cynthias, the Lydias, 
and the Lalages did in the days of Ovid, Martial, 
and Juvenal. The transformation of the natural 
brunette into the artificial blonde was obtained by 
means of dyes and bleaching lotions. If the truth 
w^ere known, it would perhaps be discovered that 
Petrarch's Laura dyed her hair just as Poppaea 
dyed hers at the request of Nero, and doubtless by 



126 

the same means, for in the Eoman writers we read 
about processes of bleaching the hair and drying it 
in the sun exactly similar to those mentioned by 
the Venetian authors, and illustrated by Yecelho 
in his book of costumes. The shades affected by 
the Roman ladies were also the same as those that 
were fashionable in Renaissance Italy. There was 
the brilliant blond, or rutilus, the golden or tawny 
blond, and the blond cendre, as the French call it, 
or, as Firenzuola's terms run, golden blond, honey 
blond, and lionato or tawny. 

Thus we read in that strangely enigmatical trea- 
tise of love and architecture the Hyjmerotomachia, 
written in the middle of the fifteenth century by 
the Venetian monk Francesco Colonna, the descrip- 
tion which PoHa gives of the beginning of Poliph- 
ilo's invincible passion. " I was sitting," she says, 
" according to the custom of beautiful young girls, 
at the window, or rather on the balcony, of my 
palace. My blond hair — my blond hair, the delight 
of young girls — ^vas floating loosel}^ over my 
snow^y shoulders. Bathed with an ambrosia des- 
tined to render it as brilliant as threads of gold, it 
Avas drying in the rays of ardent Phoebus. Proud 
to serve me, a maid was combing my hair with in- 
finite care. No, I dare to say the hair of Androm- 
eda did not seem as beautiful to Perseus, nor 




PEARLS AND JEWELS, FROM A PICTURE BY TITIAN 



129 



that of Photis to Lucius. Suddenly Poliphilo, 
having caught sight of me, could not remove from 
me his burning and devouring looks, and from 
that moment a ray of the sun of love was kindled 
within his bosom." 

Such is the first testimony that we have in Ital- 
ian literature of the existence of that " arte bion- 
deggiante " which became a craze and a scandal in 
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and which 
has survived even to the present day. Thanks to 
this art, of which far be it from us to speak evil, 
the genius of woman is enabled to create that rare 
and delicious combination of fair hair and dark 
eyes of which unassisted nature is so niggardly. 
Thanks to the " arte biondeggiante," the modern 
world is full of beauties like the chorus of virgins 
that Joachim du Bellay celebrates in his epithala- 
mium of Marguerite of France, Duchess of Savoy : 

"Leurs tresses blondoyantes 
Voletoieut oudoyautes 

Sur leur col blanchissant ; 
Leurs yeux comme planetes, 
Sur leurs faces brunettes 

Alloient resplendissant." 



VIII 
THE SPANISH TOQUE 

Almost all those who have written dainty trea- 
tises about the beauty and adornment of Avomen 
have referred to the opinion of Apuleius as regards 
the question of hair. It is even allowable to imagine 
that the austere Tertullian, when he thundered so el- 
oquenth" against the use of hair-dje and wigs and 
fantastic wimples, had not forgotten the passage of 
the Golden Ass in which is related the amorous ad- 
venture of Lucius and Photis. , For Tertullian, it 
must be remembered, the son of a centurion of the 
Proconsul of Africa, born at Carthage about the 
year a.d. 160, always lived in his native town, where 
he practised law before he became the champion of 
Christianity. His boyhood and youth coincided 
with the epoch of the oratorical triumphs of Apu- 
leius. Many a time he must have been among the 
enthusiastic listeners who applauded the lectures 
and readiness of the g-reat rhetorician in the theatre 
of Carthage, and who marvelled at his novel prose, 
so rich in color, so impressionistic, so crisp and pictur- 



131 



esque, so widely different from the classical prose of 
Kome. xit any rate, the prose of Apuleius is the 
model which Tertullian followed in his own literary 
efforts. This mode of expression thus came to pre- 
vail in the church of Carthage ; and through the 
church of Carthage, which played a preponderating 
role in the history of Western Christianity, the pict- 
uresque style was transmitted to Spain and the 
other European communities, and so presided over 
the birth of modern literature. Thus the true liter- 
ary ancestor of the Latin Church may be said to be 
Apuleius, the author of that more than piquant 
Golden Ass^ in which we read the following pane- 
gyric of hair : 

" If you cut off the hair of the most beautiful 
of women and deprive her face of its natural orna- 
ment, nay, were she of heavenly descent, engen- 
dered of the sea, nurtured in the midst of the waves, 
in a word, Venus herself, accompanied by the Loves 
and Graces, adorned with her girdle and perfumed 
with the sweetest odors, if her head were bald she 
could not please even her own Yulcan. 

" AVhat is there more charming than hair of a 
beautiful color, neatly arranged, shining softly or 
brilliantly in the sun ? Some hair is of blond more 
resplendent than the sun, but darker towards the 
roots. Other hair, black as the plumage of a crow, 



133 

plays changefully in the light like the breast of a 
pigeon, and, ]Dei*fumed with the essences of Araby, 
combed out and braided behind, resembles a mirror 
which embellishes and reflects in the eye of the 
lover the image of her whom he adores. Is it not 
charming, again, to see a great quantity of hair, 
artistically arranged on the top of the head, or else, 
when the hair is of exceptional length, loose and 
floating over the shoulders ? In short, there is 
something so distinguished in beautiful hair that 
even though a woman should appear with all sorts 
of ornaments and robes covered with gold and pre- 
cious stones, her efforts are in vain unless she have 
withal fine hair." 

Blacker and more brilliant than jet must be the 
hair of the Persian beauty ; and as for the length, 
we must hear Firdousi describe the charms of the he- 
roic Eoudabah, daughter of Mehrab, King of Cabul, 
whose black tresses were so abundant and so long 
that one day from the top of a tower of the royal 
castle where she was taking the air, having per- 
ceived Zal riding back from the chase, she let them 
fall slowly to the foot of the tower in order to help 
him to climb the wall, for her heart had suddenly 
leaped within her bosom at the sight of the un- 
known lord, and Zal used the solid coils of these 
strong and magnificent ringlets like the rungs of a 




MARGUERITE OF PARMA, BY COELLO 



135 

ladder to climb up and approach the intrepid re- 
cluse. 

In the annals of Moorish Spain we might dis- 
cover romantic stories that would be a match for 
this one. In the art of Spain, however, we do not 
find much that is suggestive in the way of coiffure. 
Certainly the blue-black tresses of the Madonnas of 
Murillo are beautiful; admirable, too, are the combs 
and patillas and the mantos of the coiffure of the 
various provinces of Spain, but their interest is 
local, for none but Spanish women can wear them. 
As for the court coiffures, the court costumes, and 
the court ladies immediately after the grand epoch 
of Philip lY. and of Yelasquez, we have only to 
read Madame d' Aulnoy's Memoires de la Cour WEs- 
jyagiie in order to confirm us in the unfavorable 
opinion which the portraits of the time have given 
us. Of the court ladies, Madame d'Aulnoy says : 
'^ They are almost all short, and extremely thin and 
slender; their skin is soft, black, and painted; their 
features regular, their eyes full of fire, their hair 
black and abundant, their hands pretty, and their 
feet of surprising smallness. Their dress becomes 
them so ill that unless one is accustomed to it one 
finds it unendurable." And elsewhere the same 
observer, speaking of the queen, Louise d' Orleans, 
niece of Louis XI Y., who married Charles II., son 



136 



of Philip lY., Avrites : " The queen could not help 
smiling when she saw herself for the first time 
dressed in the Spanish fashion, for, with the excep- 
tion of her alone, I never saw any foreigner who 
looked well in this costume. After passing through 
several rooms which are truly admirable, I found 
her in a cabinet, painted and gilded and filled with 
large looking-glasses fixed in the wood-work of the 
w^alls. She was seated on an ottoman near the 
window, and making some embroidery of gold lace 
and blue silk. Her hair was parted in the middle, 
and arranged in a braid laced with big pearls and 
attached to her girdle ; she wore a rose velvet 
gown embroidered with silver, and ear-rings that 
hung down over her bosom, and so heavy that she 
took one of them off so that I might feel the weight, 
which astonished me." 

The court coiffures during the preceding reign of 
Philip lY. may be seen in the pictures of Yelasquez, 
in the faded blond hair of the infantas, parted on 
one side, and looped in a bang over the forehead, 
or parted in the middle, prodigiously frizzled, and 
tied at the ends with ribbons and jewels in a man- 
ner that refined taste can scarcely approve. 

The finest examples of costume and coiffure that 
Spanish art affords are to be found in the portraits 
by the Portuguese artist Alonso Coello (1505 - 90), 



137 

a pupil of Eaphael and of Antonio Moro, and court 
painter to Philip II. of Spain. Our illustrations re- 
produce two exquisite works by Coello. One is the 
portrait of Marguerite of Parma, and the other is 
the portrait of Maria of Austria, daughters of 
Charles Y., Emperor of Germany and King of Spam, 
the first of the name. Both these pictures are in 
the Brussels Museum. Thus, after all, the models 
in question were not Spaniards, but Austrians, and 
the painter was not a Spaniard, but a Portuguese ; 
nor is there anything particularly Spanish about 
either of the portraits except the head-dress worn 
by Marguerite of Parma, which is generally known 
as a Spanish toque — a fashion which afterwards 
gained great favor at the court of France, and 
remains an example always w^orthy of imitation. 
The w^avy hair is brushed back from the fore- 
head and up from the neck, and gathered some- 
what loosely in a high chignon surmounted by a 
velvet toque, with a bouquet of feathers on the left, 
the toque being richly ornamented with jewelry in 
the form of mounted pearls and chains laced diag- 
onally. The hair, too, is adorned with pearls and 
jewels, among which is a serpent of enamelled gold. 
Around her neck, below the not yet too volumi- 
nous ruffle, the princess wears a magnificent collar 
of mounted jewels, and the general aspect of the 



138 



lady and of her attire is noble, sumptuous, and in 
good taste, consideration, of course, being made of 
the conditions in which she lived. Evidently so 
rich a costume and so resplendent a coiffure as this 
could scarcely be worn by young ladies who play 
lawn-tennis, ride on the top of mail-coaches, chat- 
ter like magpies, and are generally unquiet in their 
movements and gestures. A dignified costume re- 
quires a dignified wearer. However, it must be 
stated that the costume reproduced in our engrav- 
ing is one that was worn by Marguerite of Parma 
for riding on horseback, and Brantome tells us that 
the black velvet Spanish toque, either simple or 
trimmed with feathers and jewels, was the coiffure 
considered by his fair contemporaries to be most 
becoming for riding as well as for evening dress. 
For wearing a Spanish toque the hair may be sim- 
ply curled in front, and held behind in a net or 
crejpine of silk or gold thread. The form of the 
toque may also be varied by the greater or less 
elevation of the crown, and by the addition of a 
brim, either circular or of irregular shape, and 
adorned with a jewelled band and an aigrette, such 
as we see in the portraits of Marie Stuart when she 
first appeared at the court of France in all the brill- 
iancy of her youth and beauty. The coquette, too, 
will put new expression into the Spanish toque by 




MARIA OF AUSTRIA, BY COELLO 



141 

wearing it a little on one side, thus adding piquan- 
cy to grace. 

A more elaborate and curious coiffure is that 
■worn by Maria of Austria in the engraved portrait 
given. The hair, parted in the middle, is brushed 
off the forehead, braided and coiled in a chignon 
behind, while on the .top of the head is a little 
frizzed toupet, and on the left side a bunch of 
small curls and a tassel of crimped hair, the curls 
arranged star -wise, with a jewel and pendant in 
the centre ; a diadem of gold set with precious 
stones has a large jewel and pendant in the mid- 
dle, falhng just over the parting ; and the coiffure 
is completed by a fine white gauze veil or scarf 
edged with lace, to each point of which is attached 
a spangle. This scarf is tied in the middle of the 
corsage to a ring from which hangs a jewelled 
cross with three pear - shaped pearls suspended 
from it. Round the waist is a heavy jewelled 
girdle, and the skirt is fastened down the front 
by means of jewelled clasps, while the upper hem 
of the corsage is trimmed with a band of jewels. 
The high collar is enriched with spangles, and 
terminates in a dainty frill closely enframing the 
face, and the tags that adorn the ample velvet 
sleeves are beautifully Avrought with gold and 
crystal. Notice also the slashed gloves with the 



143 

finger-rings showing through the creves, the taper 
fingers of the white ungloved hand, the ear-drop- 
pers fixed in the doubly pierced ears by double 
rings. Truly this is a most noble lady and a 
most brave costume. 

In these two portraits of the daughters of 
Charles Y. we see excellent specimens of the taste 
of the sixteenth century in jewelry. The fashion 
of the day, more especially in France and in the 
Low Countries, was to adorn the hair with a pro- 
fusion of eiiseignes, agrafes^ and hallaux, as the old 
French terms are, the latter meaning balls of gold 
or silver adorned with precious stones and mount- 
ed on pins, which were stuck in the hair. Agrafes 
are merely buckles or clasps like the serpent worn 
by Marguerite of Parma. Enseignes are those 
big jewels such as we see fixed in the hair of 
both these ladies, and such as we find described 
in great numbers in the inventory of Gabrielle 
d'Estrees, composed of diamonds, rubies, sap- 
phires, and pendent pearls, set in elaborate gold 
mounts enriched with colored enamels — jewels of 
remarkable design due to the happy alliance of 
Flemish skill and Italian taste, and designed by the 
great artists of the Renaissance, Benvenuto Cellini, 
Androuet du Cerceau, Theodore de Br}^, and Pierre 
"Woeriot — the latter a famous designer of rings. 



IX 
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 

" When one writes about women," said Diderot, 
"one should dip the pen in the rainbow and dry 
the Hues with the dust of butterflies' wings. It 
suffices not to tallv about women, and to talk well, 
Monsieur Thomas ; you must make me see them. 
Place them before my eyes like so many ther- 
mometers of the smallest vicissitudes of manners 
and usages." 

If we were to follow Diderot's advice in speak- 
ing of the coiffures that were successively d la 
mode in Europe during the seventeenth and eigh- 
teenth centuries, and if we were to avail ourselves 
even sparingly of the documents afforded by the 
painting and the sculpture of that epoch, we 
should have to write a large volume instead 
of a short chapter, for the arrangement of hair 
was never more capricious than it w^as in the 
reigns of Louis XIY., Louis XY., and Louis XYL, 
when France became definitively the Queen of 
Fashion for the whole modern world. Therefore 



144 

Mr. Addison, in the ninety-eighth Spectator (June 
22, 1711), maintained that a lady's head-dress is 
the most variable thing in all nature. " Within 
my own memory," he wrote, " I have seen it rise 
and fall above thirty degrees. About ten years 
ago it shot up to a very great height, insomuch 
that the female part of our species were much 
taller than the men. The women were of such 
enormous stature that we appeared as grasshop- 
pers before them. For my own part, as I do not 
love to be insulted by women who are taller than 
myself, I admire the sex much more in their pres- 
ent humiliation, which has reduced them to their 
natural dimensions, than when they had extended 
their persons and lengthened themselves out into 
formidable and gigantic figures. I am not for 
adding to the beautiful edifices of Nature, nor 
for raising any whimsical superstructure upon her 
plans. I must therefore repeat it, that I am high- 
ly pleased with the coiffure now in fashion, and 
think it shews tlie good sense w4iich at present 
very much reigns among the valuable part of the 
sex." 

Further on in the same essay Mr. Spectator gives 
the following excellent advice about dressing hair: 
" I would desire the fair sex to consider how im- 
possible it is for them to add anything that can be 



145 



ornamental to what is already the masterpiece of 
Nature. The head has the most beautiful appear- 
ance, as well as the highest station in a human 
figure. JSTature has laid out all her art in beautify- 
ing the face; she has touched it with vermilion, 
planted in it a double row of ivory, made it the 
seat of smiles and blushes, lighted it up and en- 
livened it with the brightness of the eyes, hung it 
on each side with curious organs of sense, given it 
airs and graces that cannot be described, and sur- 
rounded it with such a flowing shade of hair as 
sets all its beauties in the most agreeable light. In 
short, she seems to have designed the head as the 
cupola to the most glorious of her works ; and 
when we load it witli such a pile of supernumerary 
ornaments we destroy the symmetry of the human 
figure, and foolishly contrive to call off the eye 
from great and real beauties to childish gewgaws, 
ribbands, and bone-lace." 

While not entirely agreeing with Mr. Addison in 
his sweeping condemnation of gewgaws and rib- 
bons, we think that the most tasteful and refined 
coiffures are those in which the predominant ele- 
ment is the natural hair and not the gewgaw. The 
basis of fashion in coiffure is the hair, and in dress 
it is the garment ; and as the component parts of 
dress are continually changing from great to little, 



146 

from long to short, from tight to loose, and vice 
versa, so the coiffure of women has continually 
varied from close to floating, from flat to fluff 3^, 
from compact to voluminous, from absence of orna- 
ment to excess of ornament. At one time the 
head-dress grows in height, and when the maximum 
of verticality has been obtained, the direction of 
obliquity is gradually substituted for it, as in the 
hennins, or steeple coiffures ; and then horizontality 
takes the place both of verticality and of obliquity, 
and in the eseoffion the coiffure grows out laterally 
in the form of enormous cushions. All these 
growths of coiffure, being more or less architect- 
ural and requiring important frame-works and ac- 
cessories, invite ornament, and the natural tendency 
of ornament being to creep, encroach, and monopo- 
lize, the hair little by little disappears, and the gew- 
gaws and ribbons remain triumphant. Then comes 
the inevitable reaction, and under some sociolog- 
ical or private influence the gewgaw is banished, 
the natural hair restored to favor, and the whole 
process from simplicity to complexity begins over 
again. 

Since the end of the Middle Ages the coiffure of 
modern Europe has been influenced by three series 
of phenomena, among which must be mentioned 
first of all the artistic movement of the Eenais- 







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DIANE Dli roITlEliS, BY JEAN GOCJON 



sance, which called attention to the models of clas- 
sical antiquity and created new models of its own, 
such as we find in the portraits of the great Italian 
artists, and in the work of the French artists of the 



148 



sixteenth century, like Jean Goujon (1515-72), Jean 
Cousin (1501-90), Germain Pilon (1515-90), and 
Barthelemy Prieur (died 1611), who adapted the se- 
vere and dignified style of antique form and orna- 
ment to the requirements of the voluptuous court of 
Henry II., sacrificing somewhat of nobleness, it is 
true, but superadding a grace and elegance that are 
purely French. Examples of the ideal of feminine 
beauty thus obtained may be found in the museum 
of the Louvre in the admirable figures by Germain 
Pilon forming a group of three destined to sup- 
port the shrine of Ste. -Genevieve, and in Jean 
Goujon's famous figure of Poitiers represented as 
the Huntress Diana, with a coiffure of admirable 
complexity and gracefulness of form. These coif- 
fures, like the finest which Italian, Eoman, and 
Hellenic art afford in the epochs of most refined 
culture, owe their beauty to the arrangement of 
the hair, and to the general silhouette rather than 
to the ornamentation. We might even go so far 
as to say that these coiffures are well and firmly 
drawn, remembering that the art of dressing hair 
is really a humble branch of sculpture, and that, as 
Sir Joshua Peynolds says in his Discourses^ though 
it is difficult to define what grace is, we feel that 
its natural foundation is correctness of design. The 
moment that the beauty of classical antiquity was 



149 

revealed, whether at Eome, Florence, Fontaine- 
bleau, or Nuremberg, the moment the art of the 
Kenaissance became triumphant, the fantastic coif- 
fures of the Middle Ages, conceived without regard 
to the form of the head and without respect to 
the proportions of the human body and its various 
parts, Avere inevitably condemned, and the only 
traces of them to be found nowadays are in remote 
survivals observable in the costumes of religious 
orders, and in the quaint caps and head-dresses 
that are worn by the country people in France, 
Germany, Holland, and Hungary. 

The second series of phenomena is connected 
with the Reformation and the concomitant move- 
ment in favor of asceticism, which naturally caused 
women to do away with gewgaws and ribbons, 
and to dress their hair with all simplicity. Natu- 
rally, from the point of view of artistic beautv, 
little good can be expected of asceticism, wiiile 
Protestantism is obviously a cold and unprofitable 
nursery-ground for feminine elegance. Neverthe- 
less, there is one kind of coiffure not without 
charm which, we might almost say, is peculiarly 
characteristic of Protestant countries, inasmuch as 
it prevailed for two and a half centuries in the 
Netherlands and in England, and has not yet en- 
tirely disappeared in the latter country. This is 



150 

the coiffure of Mile. La Yalliere, the hair parted in 
the middle and brushed flat on the top of the 
head, with bunches of ringlets on each side and a 
chignon behind. The quantity of the side ringlets 
varies, and also their length ; sometimes we find a 
large bouquet of ringlets, and at other times only 
two or three long ringlets, very precisely curled. 
Furthermore, as coquetry is stronger even than 
Protestantism, a small quantity of ornament was 
gradually added in the shape of long ear -drop- 
pers, and a slender diadem with light pendants at- 
tached on each side, as we see in the accompany- 
ing engraving representing a group of Dutch 
ladies walking, from a picture by David Teniers 
(1610-85). 

The third series of phenomena begins with the 
glorious reign of Louis XIV., and the supremacy 
and universal initiative which France henceforward 
assumed in European civihzation. When Louis 
XIY. came to the throne the table was clear. The 
universe was once more mere malleable clay which 
the future Grand Monarque was destined to model 
after his own magnificent ideas. His radiant Maj- 
esty was passionately in love with the niece of 
his minister. Cardinal Mazarin, the beautiful Ma- 
rie Mancini, cette creature splendideTment charpentee, 
as Saint- Evremond calls her, whose portrait by 




DUTCH LADIES WALKING, FROM A PAINTING BY DAVID TENIERS 



153 

Pierre Mignard (1610-95) now hangs in the Ber- 
lin Museum, resplendent with ^^outli and vivacity, 
her rich Avavy hair massed around her face en- 
tirely without ornament. From this simple coif- 
fure en cheveux were developed in a few scores of 
years all the monstrous arrangements which pro- 
voked the sagacious criticism of Mr. Addison, and 
which we shall carefully abstain from mentioning, 
inasmuch as our design is neither to write a his- 
tory of coiffure nor to classify its archaeology, but 
merel}^ to call attention to certain examples which 
seem to us to retain permanent suggestiveness and 
durable charm — examples which we shall find in 
the reigns of Louis XY. and Louis XYI. rather 
than in that of " Le Eoi Soleil.'' 

AYe cannot speak of the material beauty of the 
Frenchwoman of the eighteenth century without 
mentioning the exhaustive and masterly studies of 
Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, La Femme au 
X Vlllihne Siecle^ and L Art duXYIIIieme Steele. 
All who wish to comprehend the modifications of 
French physiognomy in the interval between Le 
Brun and Latour must consult the great mass of 
literary, historical, and artistic documents which 
these authors have so admirably co-ordinated. In 
their volumes may be seen the transition from the 
pagan serenity and superb repose of the princesses 



154 

of the reign of Louis XIY. in their mythological 
surroundings to the most piquant, delicate, and ex- 
pressive beauties of the Kegency and the reign of 
Louis XY. The women of the reign of Louis XIY. 
are bovine, Junonian, fleshly, and material. The 
women of the reign of Louis XY. are refined, ani- 
mated, slender ; their faces are illumined with in- 
telligence ; their mouths are mobile with irony ; 
their eyes shine with the fever of pleasure ; their 
physiognomy seems to be impressed with all the 
qualities of the comedies of Marivaux, the grace, 
the taste, the coquetry, and withal the tender and 
loving heart of Sylvia and Araminthe. These la- 
dies rouged their cheeks, but they required a rouge 
" qui dise quelque clioseP The rouge worn by a 
lady of quality was different from that worn by the 
court lad}^ by the hoitrgeoise, or by the actress ; it 
was a mere tinge, a simple soivpqon^ an impercep- 
tible touch. As some cruel wit put it : 

"Cette artificieuse rougeur 
Qui supplee au defaut de celle 
Que jadis causait la piideur." 

Then, besides the nuance of rouge, the toilet of 
the face needed to be completed by patches, by 
those little pieces of black sticking-plaster which 
the poets called " des moiiches dans le lait'^ — those 




^^^^>-''^--'- !jm 



MARIE MANCINI, BY PIERRE MIGNARD 



157 

moiiches that were cut in the forms of hearts, cres- 
cents, moons, stars, and comets, and hung out as 
love-baits, each with its special name — Vassassine 
at the corner of the eye, la majesteicse on the fore- 
head, Venjouee in the laughing dimple, la galante in 
the middle of the cheek, and la friponne near the 
lips. Finally must be mentioned the fashion of 
powdered hair, which, undesirable as it is, never- 
theless lends a particular piquancy to sparkling- 
eyes and youthful faces. 

Towards the end of the eighteenth century fash- 
ion changes entirely, and the kind of grace desired 
is no longer piquant, but touching and sentimental, 
and the women proceed to compose their faces ac- 
cording to the new ideal painted by Greuze and de- 
scribed by Jean Jacques Kousseau. The favorite 
type is characterized by ingenuousness, candor, lan- 
guishing tenderness ; it is at once virginal and rus- 
tic, and its garments are veils of whiteness and 
gauzes of simplicity. 

Meanwhile the coifPeur, the Parisian dress-maker, 
the " Poupee de la Rue Saint-Honore," and finally 
the fashion journal, came into glorious existence, 
and all Europe was guided by the modes of Paris, 
and tributary to the art, the commerce, and the in- 
dustry of the French capital — thanks, as La Galerie 
des Modes says, not to mere caprice, " but to the in- 



158 



ventive genius of the French ladies in all that con- 
cerns dress, and, above all, to the fine and delicate 
taste which characterizes the smallest trifles made 
by their hands." The " Poupee de la Eue Saint- 
Honore " was the predecessor of the modern fash- 
ion journal, being a life-size doll which was dressed, 
undressed, and redressed in the latest taste of Ver- 
sailles or the Palais Koyal, while replicas were sent 
to England, Germany, Italy, and Spain, until the 
day when towards the middle of the century some 
ingenious persons conceived the idea of illustrated 
fashion journals, and announced in their prospec- 
tuses that henceforward, through their efforts, for- 
eigners would no longer be obliged to trust to dolls, 
"■ which are always imperfect, and very dear, while 
at the best they can give but a vague idea of our 
fashions." 

It is not our purpose to speak of the prodigious 
mobility of French fashions in dress during the 
eighteenth century ; let it suffice to say that the 
changes followed very closely the various senti- 
mental transformations of the physiognomy of 
the woman of the day, accompanied her beauty, 
suited themselves to her tastes, and composed for 
her charms an appropriate frame or setting of 
stuffs, colors, and forms. ^Nowadays these varia- 
tions which were successivel}^ proclaimed indispen- 








STUDY OF A HEAD, BY WATTEAU 



161 

sable by the decrees of the fashion of the day have 
become indifferent to us ; the inevitable process of 
elimination has thrown aside all that was merely 
ephemeral and Avithout style ; and thus, at the 
present day, when we examine the paintings and 
engravings of the eighteenth century, previous to 
the Eevolution, we remark in a general way three 
leading types— that invented by the painter AYat- 
teau, the Louis XY. type with paniers and a low 
coiffure, and the Louis XYL type with the high 
coiffure familiar to us through the portraits of 
Marie Antoinette. Of these types the noblest is 
that which Watteau invented by means of his 
own exquisite genius, and of certain elements 
borrowed from the Yenetians and the personages 
of the Italian Comedy — the ample robe starting 
from the neck, plaited in the back like an abbe's 
cloak, and floating loosely down to the feet, the 
arms emerging flowerlike from short sleeves filled 
with engageantes of lace. With this robe Wat- 
teau imagined a coiffure which, after the example 
of Leonardo da Yinci, he studied in scores of 
sketches in sanguine that form the delight of del- 
icate eyes. No painter has draAvn more amorously 
than Watteau the voluptuous contours of hair 
brushed up from the nape of the neck and back 
from the brow, and coiled in the form of a per- 



162 

fumed helmet on the crown, or twisted into 
a simple chignon tied round with a fillet. No 
painter has rendered more delicately than Wat- 
teau the charm of the movements of a woman's 
head and neck ; the fascination of blond flesh, 
white and silky like the petal of a camelha, the 
delight of flavescent hair, ruddy like the golden 
tints of sunset, and forming a luminous nimbus 
around the head; the transition from the warm 
tones of the hair to the mat sheenless white of the 
neck formed by the short downy hair, the cheveux 
follets that curl over the nape, and seem span- 
gled by the light; the rare beauty of the short 
soft hair that curls naturally behind the ears. The 
type of feminine beauty, seen and materialized by 
Watteau, is one of the truly great and precious in- 
ventions of art, as great, as original, as fascinating 
as the types of beauty which we owe to Botticelli, 
Leonardo, Luini, and Kaphael. 

Beside Watteau's figures all the other feminine 
types of the eighteenth century appear dull and 
pretentious, though some of the high coiffures, it 
must be admitted, were wonderful works of ex- 
travagant art. An excellent and comparative- 
ly tasteful specimen of one of these coiffures is 
given in the bust reproduced in our illustration, 
being the portrait of the sister of Louis XYI., 




BUST OF MARIE ADELAIDE 



165 



Marie Adelaide, Queen of Sardinia (1759-1802). 
This coiffure is an architectural monument in hair, 
the Avork of one of those masculine capillary ar- 
tists who first made their appearance in modern 
Europe in the eighteenth century, and of whom 
the most famous were Legros, Frederic, and Leo- 
nard, who, mounted on a ladder, as the satirists of 
the day used to say : 

"BMssait des clieveux le galant edifice." 

The great revolutionist in coiffure was Legros, 
who was cook to the Comte de Bellemare before 
he opened an academy, composed of three classes, 
in which he taught valets de chambre, chamber- 
maids, and coiffeuses the new art of hair-dressing 
based upon the proportions of the head and the 
character of the face, la proportion de la tete et Vair 
du visage, and upon the principles and precepts 
laid down by the artist in the year 1765 in his 
great and amusing work. Art de la Coiffure des 
Dames Frangaises, which w^as the starting-point of 
a complete philosophy of the toilet, and of the 
most extravagant vagaries in head-gear that the 
w^orld has ever seen, even more various than the 
three hundred coiffures of the wife of Marcus 
Aurelius. Before the end of the century did not 

Paris see ladies wearing on their heads coiffures 
y 



166 

d V inoculation^ where the triumph of vaccination 
was allegorized by means of a serpent, a club, a 
rising: sun, and an olive-tree covered with fruit? 
And the coiffure a la helle Poule, which was 
adorned with a frigate in full sail ? And the coif- 
fure au Pare anglais^ where the hair was made 
the foundation on which were figured landscapes 
with meadows, trees, running brooks, and browsing 
sheep ? And the coiffure a la Monte ait ciel^ which 
inspired the English and French caricaturists with 
such pleasant inventions ? All these wild conceits 
will be found minutely depicted in the prints of 
the last century, and carefully classified in the 
portfolios of the Biblioth^que E'ationale at Paris. 
There we will leave them to the solicitude of the 
curious and the vain researches of frivolous archae- 
ologists, for it is not our desire to weary our fair 
readers with a multitude of vain details, and so 
cause them to wrinkle their foreheads with a frown 
of dissatisfaction. We prefer to leave to ruthless 
Time that ungrateful task— as Shakespeare hath it 
in his incomparable sonnets — which 

"... doth transfix the flourish set on youth 
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow." 

(Sonnet LX.) 




BUST OF MARIE ADELAIDE— REVERSE VIEW 



THE ROMANTIC PERIOD 

About the year 1780 the reaction against the 
extravagant coiffures to which we have already 
referred set in, under the influence of the writings 
of Jean Jacques Rousseau. The dresses were a la 
turqiie^ a la Creole^ a Vanglaise^ and, before the Rev- 
olution broke out, the Parisian ladies, in their 
thirst for simplicity, had reached a point where 
they found nothing simple enough unless it was a 
Venfant. During the Revolution fashion became 
entirely emancipated, and, in the state of anarchy 
which ensued, Madame Tallien reigned, but did 
not govern; her influence, however, contributed 
perhaps to popularize the return to Greek and Ro- 
man models, which the discovery of Pompeii and 
Herculaneum had once more brought into notice, 
and which the great painter David adapted to the 
modern spirit in his popular compositions. The 
Directory continued the movement in favor of 
antiGomanie, and added to it anglomanie^ and the 
craze for new inventions once more possessed the 



170 



Parisian ladies, their milliners, and their coiffeurs. 
Hence the invention of innumerable wigs, a Van- 
glaise^ d Vespagnole, d la Yeiiiis, d la Titus, a la 
Caracalla, d VAspasie, d la Sapho. One day nets 
were in fashion, the next day chignons, and the 
next the golden spirals of long ringlets. Ai- 
grettes, feathers, plates and diadems of gold, triple 
chains of gold, strings of pearls, the coryvibion and 
the capillaments of the Roman empresses were 
successively added to the arsenal of accessories with 
which the coquettes adorned their hair, and Madame 
Tallien appeared at a ball at the Opera with rings 
on her toes and her bosom covered with diamonds, 
while Madame Recamier persisted in the simplici- 
ty of her virginal white robes and her coiffure of 
short curls bound by a simple fillet — Madame Re- 
camier, whose beauty has become legendary and 
typical, thanks to her romantic life, and above all 
perhaps to the portrait, now in the Louvre, by 
which David has immortalized her features. Of 
this epoch we shall care to remember, perhaps, 
only one coiffure, somewhat in the style of that 
worn by Madame Recamier, somewhat Greek, too, 
in its simplicity, and yet peculiarly characteristic 
of many of the best and most interesting portraits 
of the second half of the eighteenth century. This 
is the arrangement of loose curls bound by a mod- 



173 



erately broad ribbon shown in our engraving of 
the portrait of the beautiful Countess of Albany, 
by the French painter Franpois Xavier Fabre 
(1766-1837), of Montpellier. This portrait is hung 
in the Uffizi Gallery, at Florence, side by side with 
a portrait of Alfieri, by the same artist, and no one 
can look at it without feeling attracted and inter- 
ested by the personality of the model, whose name 
is inseparably linked with that of the great Italian 
poet. Married to the pretender Charles Stuart, 
the Countess of Albany took refuge in a convent 
in order to escape from the brutality of her drunk- 
en husband, after whose death she retired to Flor- 
ence, where she died in 1824, at the age of seventy- 
two. Alfieri, who became deeply attached to her, 
has celebrated her name and her misfortunes in his 
works and in a special biography. She was the 
golden chain that held captive the poet's fickle 
heart ; without her, he says, he would have pro- 
duced nothing of any worth — senza laquella non 
avreifatto nullo di hiwno. The remains of Alfieri 
and of the Countess of Albany are buried together 
in a common tomb in the church of Santa Croce, 
at Florence, between the tomb of Michael Angelo 
and that of Machiavelli. 

With the portrait of the Empress Josephine by 
Prud'hon (1758-1823), and of the Countess Ke- 



174 



gnault de Saint- Jean d'Angely,by the Baron Gerard 
(1770-1836), we come to the pahny days of the 
Empire and the splendor of the court of E'apoleon 
I. Prud'hon, who possessed the spirit of ancient 
Greece, whereas David possessed only the letter, 
painted Josephine in the fresh background of the 
park of La Malmaison, her hair bound in the an- 
tique style by a triple jewelled fillet, smiling, some- 
what sentimental, too gentle a creature for such a 
mighty husband. Gerard has painted the Count- 
ess Eegnault with simple waved handeaux covering 
the ears and two little pendent ringlets — a coiffure 
that has a suggestion of classical antiquity for 
those who are familiar with the busts of the impe- 
rial families of the Eoman Empire, and a coiffure 
which, whether loosely undulated or smoothly 
brushed, will always please those who, like Sir 
Joshua Reynolds, would always have the hair "so 
braided as to ascertain the size and shape of the 
head." The costume of the Countess is altogether 
in antique style, and the shoulders and bosom are 
covered merely with transparent tulle, the beautiful 
arms being left bare. The two coiffures here rep- 
resented seem to us worthy of admiration and 
characteristic of the epoch, though of course at the 
imperial court the hair of the ladies was dressed 
with much more splendor, especially on ceremo- 




THE SISTERS, BY DEVERIA 



177 

nious occasions. The Emperor had endowed his 
generals and his ministers most liberally, and he 
required them to spend their money in doino- him 
honor. Therefore, their wives knew that the best 
way to please the sovereign was to appear in mao-- 
nificent array, covered with diamonds and precious 
stones that were used to adorn the great combs 
then in fashion, or the heavy diadems worn well 
forward over the forehead, as we see in David's 
picture of the coronation of the Empress. The 
Emperor himself paid great attention to the toi- 
lette of the court ladies, and while they were still 
fresh to their new glory and inexperienced in ele- 
gance, his Majesty was not chary of reprimands. 
Even the imperial princesses did not escape re- 
proaches when their toilettes were not thoroughly 
in harmony with the fete or ceremony which they 
graced with their presence. The Emperor saw in 
a color or in a particular kind of trimming a mani- 
festation of criticism or of opposition which existed 
only in his own imagination. Furthermore, the 
Empress, the imperial princesses, and the ladies of 
the court were not prepared by their past habits 
and education for the important role which the 
course of events and the fortunes of Bonaparte 
had called upon them to play. Hence the tone of 
gossip, the frivolity, and the paltry rivalries which 



178 



characterized the court — rivalries which the empe- 
ror himself encouraged, because he preferred to have 
the ladies concerned with any trifles rather than 
with politics. The great man withal held women 
in small esteem, and never hesitated to scold them 
with a brutality which made Talleyrand say: 
" What a pity that so great a man is so rude !" 
{Quel dommage qu'un si grand homme soit si mal 
Sieve!). Thus one day he reprimanded the Count- 
ess Kegnault de Saint- Jean d'Angely in presence of 
the whole court because he found her too beautiful, 
and because she eclipsed, in his opinion, another 
lady in whom for the moment he took a particular 
interest. 

During the Empire the great coiffeur was Micha- 
lon, who drove his cabriolet with a negro groom 
behind, charged a louis for dressing a lady's hair, 
and w^as altogether as great a coiffeur as ever lived, 
and the predecessor of the celebrities of the pres- 
ent day. Indeed, by this time the coiffeur — that is 
to say, the artist who. arranges hair in harmony 
with physiognomies — was an accepted and neces- 
sary institution, having the prestige of a century 
of existence, and of a profession clearly defined 
and distinct from that of the barber and the wig- 
maker, or perruqtcier. This distinction, w^e may 
add with a view to excusing a digression which 




COUNTESS DE SAINT-JEAN D'ANGELY, BY GERARD 



181 

may be found not unamusing, was established by 
a trial in the year 1718, when the corporation of 
perruqtiiers tried to prevent the ladies' coiffeurs 
from exercising their newly created trade. On 
this occasion Maitre Bigot de la Boissiere published 
a memoir on behalf of the coiffeurs, wherein we 
read the following statements, which, though doubt- 
less true enough, will perhaps appear to some mod- 
erate minds slightly pretentious and even extrava- 
gant : 

" We are," says the memoir, " essentially ladies' 
hair-dressers, and such functions have secured us 
protection; but this protection has made others 
jealous, as might have been expected. The bar- 
bers and wig-makers have come armed with their 
dummy heads, and have been bold enough to pre- 
tend that it is their function to dress the hair of 
ladies. They have abused certain decrees which do 
not apply to our case, and have caused several of 
us to be imprisoned. They hold their razors to our 
throats, and it is against this tyranny that we are 
now obliged to implore the help of Justice." The 
memoir then goes on to explain that there is a 
wide difference between the trade of the barber 
and wig-maker and the talent of dressing ladies' 
hair. " The profession of the wig-maker belongs 
to the mechanic arts, and that of the ladies' hair- 



182 



dresser to the liberal arts. We are neither poets 
nor painters nor statuaries, but by our special tal- 
ents we give grace to the beauty which the poet 
sings ; it is often after us that the painter and the 
statuary represent beauty ; and if the hair of Ber- 
enice has been placed among the stars, who knows 
if it did not require our aid in order to arrive at 
that high degree of glory? The details that our 
art embraces are infinitely numerous: a forehead 
more or less large, a face more or less round, de- 
mand very different treatment ; nature requires al- 
ways to be embellished or its defects to be repaired ; 
and here the coiffeur must be a painter, familiar 
with nuances^ with the use of chiaro-osciiro, and 
with the distribution of light and shade, in order 
to know how to give more hfe to the complexion 
and more expression to the charms. At one time 
the whiteness of the skin will be relieved by the 
dark tint of the hair, and the too vivid brilliancy 
of the blonde will be attenuated by the ashen color 
that we apply to the hair ; the treatment varies in 
each case according to the different situations. 
The coiffure for a first meeting is not the same as 
that for a marriage ; and the coiffure for the mar- 
riage is different from that for the day after the 
marriage. The art of dressing the hair of a prude, 
and of allowing her pretensions to be perceived 




MADAME PREVOST, BY GREVEDOX 



185 

without making them obtrusive ; the art of dis- 
playing the coquette, and of making the mother 
appear to be the elder sister of the daughter ; the 
art of suiting the coiffure to the affections of the 
soul which some one is desired to comprehend, to 
the desire to please, to the languid bearing which 
wishes only to interest, to the vivacity which will 
not brook resistance — all this requires an intelli- 
gence which is not common and a tact which 
must be inborn. The art of the coiffeur de dames 
is therefore an art bordering upon genius, and con- 
sequently it is a free and liberal art." 

The general opinion is that women were never 
so badly dressed as they were between the Res- 
toration and the end of the reign of Louis Phi- 
lippe, and he would indeed be a bold man who 
would venture to maintain the contrary. Kever- 
theless, during that epoch which we roughly des- 
ignate by the conventional date of 1830 there 
were invented certain coiffures that seem to be 
not wanting in charm. The general scheme of 
dressing the hair was a high chignon, generally 
composed of loops and bows of hair brushed into 
flat bands, and accompanied by more or less vo- 
luminous curls, rolls, shells, loops, or boucles on 
each side of the temples, the only ornament being 
flowers or ribbons or a little fichu tied over the 



186 

head. Examples are given in our illustrations : 
" The Sisters,-' by Deveria, showing simple curls 
and a chignon of loops and braids ; the portrait 
of the singer, "Madame Prevost," showing more 
voluminous curls ; and the fancy head, " Marie," 
by Grevedon, being a specimen of a coiffure com- 
posed of looped hair, which is certainly not want- 
ing in grace. 

In point of fact, a beautiful face is always beau- 
tiful, whatever may be the style in which it is 
framed, and the art of the epoch in question is by 
no means wanting in faces that are beautiful, and 
that, too, in a manner peculiarly characteristic of 
the times. These were the days of the heroines 
of Balzac, the days when Byron, Ossian, and Wal- 
ter Scott were d la mode, the days of the Gothic 
revival, of Romanticism, and of reminiscences of 
chivalry and mediaeval sentimentality. Therefore 
it is not strange that the ladies of 1830 were ex- 
ceedingly romantic, elegiac, plaintive, melting with 
tenderness, and full of noble aspirations towards 
an ideal which Avas purely literary and probably 
false. They dreamed of pages and chatelaines and 
knights-errant; at the same time they allowed 
themselves to be compared to Yenus, Terpsichore, 
Hebe, or Atalanta ; and in their gardens they loved 
to meditate in a temple of Flora or a grotto dedi- 




"marie," By GUEVEDON 



189 



cated to the Naiades over the thrilling pages of the 
Vicomte d'Arlincourt's mediseval novel Le Solitaire, 
the misfortunes of the tender and mysterious Elo- 
die, or the pathetic heroes of Madame Delphine 
Gay. Above all things, they were mindful of 
beauty, in- spite of the strange manner in which 
they often adorned it ; and for this we should be 
grateful to them; for, so far as concerns expres- 
sion and bearing, they were in a way the prede- 
cessors of the aesthetic ladies of our own days, in- 
asmuch as their ultimate ideal was inspired by the 
literature and the art of the past, by reminiscences 
of the age of chivalry and romances of mediaeval 
princesses — influences which we venture to find as 
worthy of respect as the poetry of Eossetti and 
the paintings of the pre-Eaphaelites. Compared 
with the women of the eighteenth century, whose 
ideal of beauty was successively frivolous piquancy 
and affected ingenuousness, the women of 1830 
seem to us infinitely noble and refined, and we can 
well understand the admiration which they com- 
manded, whether they wore quaintly looped chi- 
gnons, or drooping ringlets, or crisp side-curls, or 
high combs, or simply those flat and sheeny han- 
deaux a la Yierge that frame with contrasting 
curves the pure oval of a brunette's face— those 
bandeaux which Leonardo da Yinci loved to draw. 



190 



and which Perugino used to spend hours in arrang- 
ing with his own hands on the head of the beau- 
tiful girl whom he married when he was already 
a grajbeard. 

All these romantic and sentimental preoccupa- 
tions we see depicted in the limpid looks and lan- 
guishing attitudes of the ladies of this period, in 
their unruffled countenances and liquid eyes, in the 
satiny smoothness of their glossy curls, m their 
expression of calm tenderness and delicacy of soul. 
Doubtless the sentimentality of these times was 
often ridiculous, and the verses a la mode truly 
inferior ; and yet we may be sure that when these 
fair ladies, the image of our grandmothers, were 
in the land of the living, their voices rang sweetly 
in the ears of men, and that, in the words of Cap- 
tain Steele, they were listened to with partiality, 
and approbation sat in the countenances of those 
with whom they conversed even before they com- 
municated what they had to say. 



XI 

ON JEWELRY AND ORNAMENTS 

The arts of the goldsmith and of the jeweller 
were born simultaneously. Their history begins 
at the same moment. As soon as prehistoric man 
commenced to find pleasure in drawing the profile 
of an aurochs on the flint of his hatchet, prehis- 
toric woman, we may be sure, was already col- 
lecting colored pebbles, boring holes in them, and 
stringing them into necklaces and ear-rings. The 
love of ornament seems to be instinctive and in- 
curable. We shall probably delight in personal 
ornaments to the end of time, and therefore it is 
good to let the mind dwell upon the subject, with 
a view to comprehending the why and the where- 
fore, and thereby intensifying our pleasure. 

By jewelry we mean, roughly speaking, personal 
ornaments of metal with or without the addition 
of precious stones. Each part of the body has its 
special jewelry. The head has the crown, the dia- 
dem, the fillet, the taenia, hair-pins, aigrettes, combs, 
f rontals, nets, flowers, tiaras, mitres. For the ears 

10 



193 

and the nose there are rings and droppers. For 
the neck there are necklaces, collars, carcanets, 
jyent-d-cols, lockets, medallions, amulets. For the 
neck and bosom, to be worn over the garments, 
are brooches, pins, clasps, fibulae, breastplates, but- 
tons, pendants, reliquaries, chains, crosses, badges, 
insignia, and decorations. For the waist there are 
girdles, buckles, chains, chapelets, chatelaines, es- 
carcelles, and smelling-bottles. For the legs there 
are rings, anklets, chains, twists, spinthers, peri- 
carps, and dextrals. For the wrists and arms 
there are bracelets and bands ; for the fingers 
and toes there are rings. For the usages of the 
toilet there are mirrors and combs and a hundred 
dainty objects which the art of the jeweller beau- 
tifies. There are jewels for all ages and for all 
sorts and conditions of men, women, and children ; 
there are jewels civil and jewels religious, royal 
and warlike jewels, jewels sacred and profane, new- 
fashioned and old-fashioned, and of infinite varie- 
ty. Jewelry and pottery, such are almost the only 
relics that remain of the most ancient civilizations. 
The houses, the vestments, the iron utensils, and the 
arms of the remote past have returned to dust to- 
gether with the people who made and used them, 
but the ornaments have remained. In the muse- 
ums of Europe and Boulak we see countless spec- 



193 



imens of Egyptian jewelry of glass, cut stones, 
gold, bronze, and enamel. Similar in character 
and material are the necklaces of glass beads 
and pendent masks and the gold ornaments of 




GOLD WREATH OF MYRTLE LEAVES, ANTIQUE ITALO-GREEK 



the Phoenicians, who, according to Castellani, Avere 
the inventors of filigree-work. In the museums of 
Berlin, Athens, and St. Petersburg we see the col- 
lections of gold ornaments dug up b}^ Dr. Schlie- 
mann in the subsoil of ancient Tro}^, and the beau- 
tiful Greek jewelry discovered in the country of 



194 

the ancient Scythians, in the mounds of Koul-Aba 
and Kertch. In the Louvre and the British Mu- 
seum we can study the marvellous jewelry dis- 
covered in recent years in Magna Graecia and 
Etruria through the intelligent violations of the 
cemeteries of Yulci, Cervetri, Chiusi, and Tosca- 
nella. In various collections are contained speci- 
mens of the jewelry of the Assyrians, the Chal- 
daeans, the Persians, the Byzantines, the Moors, 
the Indians, of the barbarian hordes of the ISTorth, 
and of all the nations of mediaBval and modern 
Europe down to our own times. The materials 
abound ; their co-ordination and historical expla- 
nation are merely matters of patience and erudi- 
tion. 

We have not the grave purpose of making a 
historical study of jewelry, but merely of calling 
attention to a few examples of beautiful work of 
the past, with a view to provoking discussion, dis- 
satisfaction, and the spirit of criticism among those 
who buy and those who wear jewelry ; for when 
we have seen the gold ornaments of the Greeks 
and the Etruscans, made with 22-carat yellow gold, 
we are inclined to look with indifference upon the 
productions of the modern jeweller's art, exception 
being made of the setting and mounting of pre- 
cious stones, in which the nineteenth century is 



195 

supreme. The sprig of flowers or the branch 
of foUage executed in diamonds by contemporary 
Parisian artisans is an ornament truly artistic, 
and comparable in its way to the beautiful dia- 
dems and fibulae of Athens, and to the splendid 
and poetical jewelry of the Renaissance. But our 
modern gold ornaments, our necklaces, our ear- 
rings, our brooches, how meagre in conception, 
how hideous the burnished surface, and how dis- 
agreeable the color ! What modern brooch or 
agrafe can be compared for grace and invention 
with an antique Italo-Greek fibula ? What modern 




TWO FIBULA OF BEATEN GOLD, ANTIQUE ITALO-GREEK 



diadem surpasses in delicacy of design and work- 
manship this wreath of myrtle leaves that once 



196 

rested on an Etruscan brow? What ear-rings are 

made more dainty than the antique Greek pendants 

of winged Victory surmounted 



by the solar disk, or Cupids sus- 





ANTIQUE ITALO-GREEK EAR-RINGS 



pended by fine chains, or the hundreds of de- 
signs in filigree and granulated gold of Greek or 
Italo-Greek invention ? What necklaces are more 
sumptuous than those triple and quadruple rows 
of pendants, rosettes, and studs hanging from slen- 
der hairlike chains that have been found in Etruria 
and in the Crimea ? 

Of late years archaeologists have begun to use the 
word Etruscan very carefully when speaking of ob- 
jects of art, and to prefer the less compromising 
term Italo-Greek, for in reality we know very lit- 



197 



tie about Etruscan art beyond the fact that it is 
obviously a more or less original combination of 
Oriental and Hellenic elements. In the earlier 
Etruscan art the Oriental influence is supreme ; in 
the later art the Hellenic influence reigns unrival- 
led. But how was the primitive Oriental influence 
exercised ? Who were the intermediaries between 
the East and central Italy, where the Etrusca.ns ex- 
isted in the form of a great 
political confederation as early 
as the tenth century e.g. ? Were 
the Etruscans colonists from 
Asia Minor ? If this hypothe- 
sis be not true, how does it 
happen that Ave find the same 
system of burial in Etruria and 
in Asia Minor ? Why do the 
Etruscans alone of the Medi- 
terranean peoples practise the 
art of divination? Why do 
they wear Oriental costume — 
Ions: flowered robes with brill- 
iantly colored borders, Lydian 
sandals, and hoods that remind 
one of the Phrygian bonnet? 
Why are the Etruscan games and amusements of 
Lydian origin ? All these questions the archaeolo- 




A.NTIQUE ITALO-GREEK 
EAR-RING 



198 

gists ask with a desire to find confirmation of the 
legend of the Lydian emigration under Tyrrhenos, 
which Herodotus has recorded, and which Yirgil 
has embelhshed. 

On the other hand, although an Asiatic migra- 
tion into Etruria cannot be absolutely demonstrat- 
ed, the commercial relations between Etruria and 
the East are indisputable, and the intermediaries 
were the Phoenicians. The Etruscans, through the 
Phoenicians, were in commercial relations with 
Carthage, Egypt, Greece, and the East. Their 
markets were supplied with all the products of the 
East — gold, silver, ivory, precious stones, purple, 
jewelry, caskets, decorated ceramics, imitation As- 
syrian and Egyptian wares. These objects of 
Asiatic style were used as models by the native 
Etruscan workmen for the manufacture of bronze 
utensils, jewelry, and rings, and thus the most an- 
cient objects of art of Etruscan origin are decorated 
exclusively with Eastern designs — roses, palms, 
lotus flowers, lions, tigers, pantliers, fantastic ani- 
mals, sphinxes, griifins, winged bulls. Even during 
the Koman epoch the Etruscans continued to em. 
ploy Eastern motifs and patterns to decorate mir- 
rors and cinerary urns, to compose frames for paint- 
ings, handles and feet for vases, and ornaments for 
furniture and all kinds of utensils. These Oriental 



199 

motifs became so usual that they passed into the 
traditions of Eoman art, and thence, at the time of 
the Kenaissance, into modern art, where they con- 
tinue to constitute one of the chief resources of our 
silversmiths, jewellers, potters, and wood-carvers. 

As for the Hellenic influence in Etruria, it is ev- 
idently very ancient, for it is certain that Hellenic 
emigration into Italy began long before the historic 
period, while the commercial relations which this 
emigration established gradually developed century 
after century, until the Hellenic influence became 
preponderating. The great objects of commerce 
were pottery, painted vases, and gold jewelry. The 
immense majority of the so-called Etruscan vases 
were indisputably manufactured in Greece, and 
there is every reason to believe that the most beau- 
tiful and elegant specimens of that gold jewelrv 
which we call Etruscan were made not by native 
artists, but by the Greeks, who, alone of the an- 
cients, had taste so exquisite that they never sacri- 
ficed beauty of form to profusion of detail or exu- 
berance of fanciful decoration. 

Meanvrhile this antique Greek or Italo-Greek 
jewelry remains masterly, and in certain details of 
delicate manipulation inimitable. The process of 
manufacture is not chasing, chisel-work, stamping, 
or moulding, but soldering and superposition. This, 



200 



according to Castellani, is the reason why the gold 
ornaments of the ancients have so marked a charac- 
ter, deriving their distinction from the spontaneous 
idea and inspiration of the artist, rather than from 
the cold and regular execution of the workman. 
The very imperfections and voluntary neglect of 
certain parts give 
ry an artistic ap- 
seek for in vain 
work, which is uni- 
some in aspect, 
wanting in inti- 




to antique jewel- 
pearance that we 
in most modern 
form and weari- 
commonplace, and 
miU. Then again 



RENAISSANCE PENDANT AND BUACELET 



the gold ornaments of antiquity are more charm- 
ing and brilliant to the eye than modern work be- 
cause the matter employed is different. The an- 
cients, like the artists of the Eenaissance, used 
gold 22 carats fine, only two parts of alloy, 



201 



just sufficient to give the resistance and durability 
which absolutely pure gold does not possess, and 
yet not enough to impair the brilliancy of the 
precious metal. Gold of 22 carats is not oxi- 
dizable, and does not blacken in the fire. It re- 
mains of a fine yellow color, which improves with 
wear, and needs no polishing. Its beauty resides 
in the substance itself, which is unchangeable. 
Gold of this quality is perfectly malleable, and 
receives enamels of all kinds without chano^ino^ 
their color or lessening their transparency. The 
gold employed by modern jewellers is 18 carats 
fine ; it is slightly oxidizable ; it changes the color 
of certain enamels ; under the action of fire the 
surface becomes covered with copper oxides, which 
need to be removed by scraping, and then the ob- 
ject has to be poHshed with pumice, tripoli, and 
rouge, or else colored yellow by immersion in baths 
of salts and acids. The artificial coloring and pol- 
ish thus obtained disappear with wear, and the ob- 
ject becomes more or less hideous, whereas the 
22-carat yellow gold improves with age. It may, 
however, be asked whether the average modern 
eye is sufficiently educated to appreciate the beauty 
of the color of gold and the fine shades of tone in 
transparent enamel. 

In the massive jewelry of the Middle Ages the 




MIRROR-CASE, FOURTEENTH CENTURY, FRENCH 



modern woman will perhaps find but few suggest- 
ions for elegance. On the other hand, in the toi- 
let accessories of that epoch there are many ex- 
amples worthy of imitation, at least so far as the 
spirit is concerned. The collections of the Louvre, 
the British Museum, South Kensington, and the 
museums of Italy and Germany are very rich in 



203 



toilet articles of ivory and boxwood, which well 
repay a passing glance. The ivory mirror-cases 
are always most elaborately carved, generally with 
scenes of chivalry and love. In the South Ken- 
sington Museum one mirror -case represents four 
mounted knights fighting at the foot of a battle- 
mented tower, from the top of which three maid- 
ens pelt them with roses. Another represents the 
castle of Love besieged by mounted knights, who 




SIXTEENTH CENTUKY COMB, FKENCH 



climb up the towers with rope-ladders and elope 
with willing ladies. Other mirror -cases in the 
British Museum are adorned with representations 
of the storming of the castle of Love, hunting-par- 



304 



ties where the ladies with hawks on their fists ride 
side by side with their lords, scenes of courtship, 
concerts, serenades, the stories of Lucretia and of 
Pyramus and Thisbe, the Nativity, the adoration 




SIXTEENTH CENTURY COMB, ITALIAN 



of the Magi, etc. Mediaeval combs are also carved 
with similar subjects. One comb in the South 
Kensington collection represents a concert, and 
men and women dancing; another comb of the 
beginning of the sixteenth century is adorned with 
a scene Avhich appears to be the judgment of 
Paris ; another very beautiful Italian comb of the 
same date is ornamented with arabesque scroll- 
work and medallions enclosing busts. We may 
safely affirm that no lady of the present day combs 



205 



her hair with such an exquisitely artistic comb as 
this one. 

Several specimens of the jewelry and ornaments 
of the time of the Renaissance have been noticed 
incidentally in previous pages, notably in connec- 
tion with the portraits of the two daughters of 
Charles Y. and of the Duchess of Urbino. At the 
moment when the rediscovery of antiquity pro- 
duced that splendid movement of art and thought 
which we call the Renaissance there existed three 
schools of jewellers whose works are known to us 
chiefly through the monuments of painting and 
sculpture. The Flemish painters have depicted for 
us the jewelry of Bruges and Ghent ; the primi- 
tive painters of Italy show us the jewelry of Sienna 
and Florence ; and the mediaeval sculptors have 
preserved the types of the jewelry of old France. 
The triumph of the Renaissance spirit in Italy, and 
the spread of Italian influence all over Europe, put 
an end to the personality of these local schools, 
and brought into vogue the style to which we give 
the name of Renaissance — a style created by the 
independent efforts of many great men, but yet 
strongly impressed with certain common charac- 
teristics. In the days of the Renaissance the great 
designers of jewelry were Mantegna and Michael 
Angelo, Ghirlandajo and Pol la j nolo, Francia and 



206 



Yerrocchio, Benvenuto Cellini and Leonardo, Al- 
bert Diirer and Jean Cousin ; for at that time the 
great artists were universal, and the painter did 
not think it undignified to design a brooch or the 
sculptor to model a salt-cellar. The artists of 
the Kenaissance were, however, unacquainted with 
actual specimens of antique jewelry, no objects of 
importance having been found until the excava- 
tions of the present centu- 
ry in Etruria and the Cri- 
mea. They w^ere therefore 
saved from the danger of 
imitation, and left without 
guide or model to apply to 
decorative purposes the ma- 
terials which the newly dis- 
covered literature and art 
of pagan antiquity placed 
at their disposal. Thus we 
find the jewelry of the Re- 
naissance ornamented with 
figures of gods, fauns, sa- 
tyrs, and grotesque figures 
of mythological inspiration, engraved in stones, 
chased on gold, cast, repousse, and enamelled ; for 
it was especially in the art of chiselling and enam- 
elling that the artists of the Eenaissance excelled. 




RENAISSANCE PENDANT 



207 



The Renaissance pendants are peculiarly character- 
istic, and a fine specimen is the merman reproduced 
in our illustration, made of a baroque pearly with 




TUE MEUMAN 



hanging pearls mounted in gold, and enriched with 
precious stones and colored enamels most ino-en- 
iouslv disposed. Very beautiful, too, are the Re- 
naissance pendants of regular design, and the rich 
bracelets and magnificent ceintures and chains of 
beautifully wrought gold embellished with colored 
enamel and gems. But of beautiful jewelry we 
might give countless examples were the number of 



our illustrations unlimited, and were we sure of not 
fatiguing the attention of the reader by the reiter- 
ation of views which are perhaps too completely 
opposed to current contemporary ideas. Thanks 
doubtless to atavism or m3^steriously innate Orien- 
tal prejudices, the writer of these vain pages takes 
no interest in the programmes and results of uni- 
versities for women. Yassar laureates and Girton 
graduates are indifferent to him. His conviction 
is that for a woman gifted with beauty the ideal 
occupation is to wear beautiful clothes and orna- 
ments, and look charming. He would fain see 
women loaded with jewelry like idols, with dia- 
dems and ear-plates on their heads, long droppers 
in their ears, their bosoms glittering with neck- 
laces, their waists encircled with girdles of glory, 
their arms stiff with bracelets, and their ankles 
bedecked with rings that w^ould jingle as they 
walked. Evidently this ideal cannot be realized 
in the actual conditions of Occidental life, with its 
lack of privacy and modesty, its brusqueness of 
movement and gesture, its haste and unquietness 
in all things. Therefore it is useless to pursue fur- 
ther these fragmentary studies of jewelry and fem- 
inine adornments, the more so as the Renaissance 
was soon blighted by the Reformation, since which 
event the adornment of beauty has been tolerated 



at the best rather than frankly commended and 
encouraged. Nevertheless, women continue to be 
beautiful, and there are at the present day thou- 
sands and thousands of ladies who dress divinely; 
but, with the exception of the Arab women of the 
Ouled E'ail tribe and the Nautch girls of India, no 
modern woman wears enough jewelry and orna- 
ments of gold. For that reason we have been 
obliged to limit our admiration to the pictures and 
statues of the past, and to enjoy in imagination 
what the meanness of the age refuses to the desire 
of the eyes. 



THE END 



By THEODORE CHILD 



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